How Does Sound Travel?

How does sound travel?  Does it travel through solids, liquids and gases?  This week, the fourth graders are investigating these questions.  Today, they explored if sound travels through air and water.

Week 8, First Nine Weeks

Reading: This week, we are continuing to read Tiger Rising as a class.  The students are reading in small groups and discussing the book, especially making inferences about the characters and noticing signposts.  The children also chose vocabulary words in the first two chapters and will be working on developing a deeper understand of the words so that they can begin using them in their writing and speaking.

Language: Our focus changes to verbs this week.  We will be learning about action verbs, helping verbs and different verb tenses.  We will continue looking at the differences between singular and plural possessive nouns.  Here is a little quiz the kids can use to practice: Possessive Nouns.

Math: The children will continue working on the addition and subtraction menu as we shift our focus to subtraction and different methods the students can use to subtract.

Alabama History: This week we will talk more about the Native American tribes of Alabama that we've all heard of: Choctaw, Cherokee, Chickasaw and Creek.  We'll discuss differences in their tribes and their relationships with the European explorers.

Science: The students will be investigating how sound travels through air, liquid and solids.  Just how did those old-fashioned cans and strings work as telephones?  Your fourth grader should be able to tell you later this week!

Bookmarks

This week, the kids took some time to make bookmarks for kids in Birmingham's West End who attend Urban Ministry's after school program, Urban Kids.  The kids were generous, putting thought, care and creativity into each of these bookmarks for others.  I loved seeing their thoughtfulness!

Math

The children have been doing some pretty amazing things in math this week!  Take a look at some of the different ways that they solved 148 + 148 in their heads:

They have also learned to play some fun math games like Close to 100 and Bowl-a-Fact.  These are great games that require only a deck of cards and one die.  If you haven't already played these, take some time and see if a fourth grader can beat you!

Week 7, First Nine Weeks

Reading: The students are learning more about theme this week as we read short stories and look for the life lesson in them.  I have encouraged the children to be on the lookout for themes in their own books and even in TV shows or movies that they watch.  Later on in the week we will begin a class book study on Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo.

Language: We have been practicing possessive nouns for the past week and will continue to work on them this week.  Our main focus is ensuring students can tell the difference between a plural word and a singular word.  For instance: child's and children's both have an apostrophe then an "s," but children is plural.  The students need to be able to recognize and tell the difference between words like" book's" and" books' " and be able to tell which one is plural.  Here is a little tic-tac-toe online game to practice: Possessive Nouns.

Math: This week, the students will be working on addition and subtraction.  Check out one of the number talks that the children did last week to solve 126 + 124 in their heads.  They've got some great strategies!

Alabama History: We have been talking about the early people in Alabama, moving through the Paleo, Archaic and Woodland Periods.  This week we will discuss the Mississippian Mound Builders.

Science: Over the last few days, the students have been "playing" a variety of "instruments" and learning how pitch is related to vibrations and even size.  This week we will also look at how tension effects pitch and how sound travels through air and water.

Gus playing the xylophone

Aaron playing the String Beam

Liv playing the Kalimba

Cannon playing the Water Phone

Goat Tube

Today, with our character partner's, we read a story called Beatrice's Goat.  It is the true story of how one little girl, Beatrice, was given a goat through the nonprofit organization, Heifer Interantional (heifer.org) and how that goat changed her life.  The children can tell you more about just how this goat did that!  

This tube will hold exactly enough quarters to buy a goat for a family just like Beatrice's.  The children are hoping to fill the tube with quarters this year, but we have encouraged the kids to do extra chores, or make small sacrifices (like not getting ice cream one day and instead using that money for a donation) rather than just asking for money.  Hopefully, we'll be able to fill the tube up more than once this year!

Rounding and Place Value

Here are some websites with games to practice place value and rounding that we have been working on:

Place Value - A variety of games to work on specific skills related to place value

Rounding - A variety of games that work on the basic skill of rounding.  While these are smaller numbers than some we have been working with, they show great understanding.

Pac-Man for Rounding - Rounding to the nearest hundred

Who Wants to be a Millionare Rounding Game

Rounding Quiz - Round to specific place values

Owl Challenge

Check out this incredible trophy that is resting in our classroom this week:

Yes, the Owl Challenge trophy has been awarded to this fourth grade classroom thanks to their commitment to staying healthy, exercising outside of the school and remembering to post their points.  Each 3rd - 5th grade class is competing to earn the most points during the week by exercising.  This past week, our class posted the most points!  And congratulations to Carly for being the overall winner for the week by posting the most points of any 3rd - 5th grade student!  This trophy sure looks pretty in our room; I hope we get to hang on to it for a while!

Week 6, First Nine Weeks

Reading: Tomorrow, the students will complete an assessment showing me how much they know about the different genres.  The rest of the week will be spent talking about theme and another signpost.  Theme can often be tricky for kids.  Often, they want to generalize the text and say what it is about rather than the lesson that is learned.  As you are watching TV shows, movies, or reading books together this week, try to get your child to think about the theme.  Some questions we'll be discussing in the classroom to help guide us are "What did the main character learn?" or "How did the main character grow or change?"  The signpost we'll be looking at is called "Words of the Wiser."  This signpost alerts us to pay attention when a character is talking to another character, often an older and wiser one.  Quite often, the other character will share a piece of advice that can easily be transferred into a theme.  (Think back to some of your favorite stories and I think you'll quickly notice this: Gandolf in Lord of the Rings, Dumbledore in Harry Potter, Aslan in Narnia, Mufasa in the Lion King, the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella and many more!)

Language: We are continuing to focus on possessive nouns, ensuring that students can tell plural and singular possessive nouns apart as well as use them properly.

Math: I hope to finish rounding early this week and then our focus will shift to addition and subtraction.  Some homework your child will start off with will be solving addition problems in multiple ways.  Please do not help him/her with this as they can do it, but if you've got the time, let them tell you about how they solved the problems and which ways they found most efficient and why.

Alabama History: We have not gotten as much covered the last few lessons as I had planned because of the incredible questions your children have about prehistoric Alabama: how people came to be here, what life was like for those people, the animals that lived at that time, etc.  I love hearing their many, many questions, but unfortunately I do not know the answer to them alll.  I hope they are asking you and/or perhaps doing some research on their own!  We will continue talking about early Alabamians this week and discussing what life was like for Paleo, Archaic, Woodland and Mississipian Indians.

Science: On Friday, the children discovered that sound is caused by vibration.  Check out how they figured it out:

This week we will continue to look at that as well as how to change the pitch of an instrument/object.

Week 5, First Nine Weeks

Math: Our focus this week continues to be place value: understanding the values of the digits and how each place value is related to another place value (ex: hundreds is 10x tens).  Later in the week, we'll begin working on rounding starting with using a number line to round.

Reading: The students will be reading short stories this week and discussing them, working on their listening and discussing skills as well as looking out for the signposts we have discussed.  Students will also determine the genres of the stories.

Language: Pronouns and possessive nouns will be the grammar focus of the week as we continue our unit on nouns.

Alabama History: Last week, we discussed geological features that you might find around the world.  This week, we will discuss the geographical features you can find in our state including what makes the five regions unique.

Science: The children will be honing in on their listening skills as we discover what makes sound and how you can change the pitches of different items.

Sound Discrimination

There are some unmistakable sounds out there: a coin dropping, the washing machine washing, a tornado siren and more.  Things that you would be able to identify, no matter if your eyes were closed or if you were in a whole new situation.  That is sound discrimination: the ability to identify sounds and tell them apart.  Yesterday, the students used the objects below and tried to test their friends to see if they could identify the object just based off of the sound it made when it landed on the desk.  On Monday, we'll use these same objects to create a code system!

Week 4, First Nine Weeks

I hope you all enjoyed a long weekend and some sunshine!

Math: The students are continuing with a place value menu: practicing reading large numbers, comparing large numbers, identifying place value, understanding value of a digit and writing numbers in expanded, word and standard form.  There will probably be a couple assessments throughout the week so that the children can prove to me what they truly understand and what needs a bit more work.

Reading: Our study of genres continues this week as we read picture books and discuss characteristics of specific genres.  The children are also learning more about the signposts that authors leave for us which give us clues to help us understand the text.

Language: We have been talking about nouns, proper nouns and correctly punctuating titles.  The children will have an assessment on Wednesday on this topic.  Here are a few online websites for practice:

• An online quiz about capitalization rules: Capitalization Quiz
• A different online quiz about capitalization rules: Capitalization Quiz
• An online quiz about punctuating titles: Punctuating Titles Quiz
• Information and online quiz about punctuating titles: Punctuating Titles

Later in the week, we will begin learning about pronouns.

Science: We will be starting the exciting unit of sound!  The children will be learning more about the properties of sound and how our ears interpret sound.  If you've got any expertise (or know someone that does) about the ear and would like to come in to tell the children more about this topic in the next couple of weeks, please let me know!

Alabama History: After discussing a bit of world geography, we will now begin talking about Alabama's geography and features that make our state unique.