Week 8, Third Nine Weeks

Winter Festival was so much fun!  Thank you to everyone for the part you played in making it so much fun and so successful!

Here's what I hope we will accomplish this week (weather permitting)...

Reading: The book clubs will begin finishing their books and completing activities based on the books.

Math: We continue to work on fractions with a focus on equivalent fractions, comparing fractions and later on this week, we will be adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators.

Language: The students, over the next couple of weeks will be learning more about conjunctions, clauses and conjunctions.  Yes, we even watched that classic, Conjunction Junction last week.  Go ahead, sing along:




And today, to learn more about dependent clauses, we watched this love story about two robots:



Science: This week, students will be building switches for their circuits as well as constructing their very own flashlights.

Alabama History: We will be discussing new forms of transportation, early Alabama towns, commerce, industry, manufacturing and education in antebellum Alabama.

Hero Day

We have been studying heroes for the last month or so.  No, not characters like Superman and Batman, but real life heroes.  Heroes that make a difference in the world, that make sacrifices for others, that care about other people.  The students have read biographies, written essays and even decorated a cape (because of course that's what heroes wear, right?).  Today, we celebrated their wonderful work by visiting younger classes and sharing with them about our real-life heroes.  I was SO proud of the way that the kids spoke with pride about their heroes and the kindness they showed to the younger students as they spoke to them about their heroes.  These fourth graders were proud of their heroes and thrilled to share about them today!  What a great day!

Week 7, Third Nine Weeks

Looking forward to seeing all of you at the Winter Festival this coming Saturday!

Reading: The students are continuing to enjoy reading their book club books as they participate in meaningful discussions about their books.  They will have a vocabulary test on Friday, but since each group has their own vocabulary list, there will not be a study stack on the words.

Language: Students are finishing up their hero essays early this week.  Then, we will be decorating capes and presenting to some of the younger classes about our heroes on Wednesday.  Later on in the week, we'll be working on conjunctions.

Math: Students will be comparing fractions and finding equivalent fractions this week.  There are some great, fun apps that help with fractions: Motion Math, Coop Fractions (this one is quite challenging!), Pizza 1 and Pizza 2.

Science: We had a busy week last week and did not get to parallel and series circuits, but we should be working on those this week and hopefully making our very own switches!

Alabama History: The students will be discussing farmers in early Alabama as well as the difficult subject of slavery.

Owlmazing Race

What fun we had today!  The kids did a superb job not only running through the obstacle course, but cheering each other on.  They certainly were a rough looking group of kiddos today, but their kind, fun-loving spirits still shone through!  A big thank you to Mrs. Burczyk for helping us with our banner and the flags!

Magic City Harvest

Yesterday afternoon, we painted bowls for Magic City Harvest's annual fundraiser, the Empty Bowl Project.  Students from around Birmingham paint (and create) bowls to donate to this organization.  Then, on Friday, April 10, these bowls will be available for purchase, along with a delicious bowl of soup made by a local Birmingham chef.  All the money raised will go to support Magic City Harvest, an organization that works to get left over food from restaurants (and even our own SCE cafeteria) to shelters in our area.  The bowls have been glazed and will soon be put in the kiln to add that beautiful bright shine!

Watching the kids paint, giving careful attention to bowls that will not even be their own, bowls that are instead painted to help raise money to support others in our area, was a gift!  I'm so proud of these kids for so many reasons!