Winter Holidays

http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/holidays/

Thanksgiving

http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/

It's Freezing....Somewhere....

We are tracking the temperature in Fairbanks, Alaska along with the temperature here in Houston to compare. Today it was 12 degrees in Fairbanks and 76 in Houston! Some of the kids couldn't believe that it could actually get so cold! I promised a picture of warm water freezing mid-air and turning into snow! (This picture was taken in Antarctica.)

Natural Resources

We are learning about natural resources in science. We have taken on two big projects. First, we have made a commitment to recycle all paper in our classroom. We are also working on presenting a Power Point presentation to other classes to encourage them to recycle.

Several of my students have been very proactive and have started to recycle at home. Remember that you can call 311 to request a recycling bin.

Our second project is composting! Our school owns a compost tumbler. We are collecting garden and kitchen waste from our homes and from the cafeteria to add to the tumbler. It's already filling up!! We plan to add the compost to our school garden!!

Museum of Natural Sciences

Our field trip to the Museum of Natural Sciences was a success! We started with an experiment on DISSOLVING and then moved on to the planetarium. Then we broke up into small groups. I was with the group that learned about African animals from the Sahara. You can see the boys holding a real cheetah hide! Other students learned about dinosaurs and MUMMIES! Several kids got to see a real AZTEC mummy!!! The docents told me afterwards that they were very impressed by my students' knowledge and the quality of questions they asked. I felt so proud!!Lots of hands-on experiences and great memories!

Eerie Monster Stories

The kids finished publishing their monster stories today. I will try to post some to the blog next week.

Next week our prompt will be, "Write about a time you were scared..." .

Ding Dong

Wow!! I had no idea that our unit on Electricity would end with a bang...or rather...a ding dong!!! While I was gathering materials for an experiment on electromagnets I found some doorbell kits in the science lab. In a matter of minutes the kiddos had managed to connect the doorbell. Then several had the brilliant idea of installing the doorbell on our classroom door! And it doesn't end there....they then installed another doorbell on Ms. Vasquez's door. So next time you come to visit room 34 don't forget to ring the bell first!!!

Amazing work, kids!!!

Historical Fiction

http://www.opencourtresources.com/ocr/grade4/index.html

This week we start our unit on Historical Fiction. Check out the above link to get a headstart on the vocabulary words you need to know for our first story, Sarah, Plain and Tall.

Back to School Bash

Ulises, Maria, and Jacqueline made us proud! They played their recorders like pros on a big stage in front of a BIG audience!!! I'll post pictures soon!!!

Fact and Opinion

http://www.teachingandlearningresources.co.uk/factoropinion.shtml

Try this little quiz! I think you will do great (but that is my OPINION!!!)

Electrical Circuits

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/8_9/circuits_conductors.shtml
Today we finished our Pathfinders Experiment to learn about complete and incomplete circuits. Go to the above link to do a virtual experiment!

The following is a great website to review everything we have learned so far in Science about circuits:
http://www.andythelwell.com/blobz/

Another Character Poem by Maria

The Girl Who Loved The Wind
She means Danina
She means dainty,beautiful,and kind
She is the number 10
She is like a banana
She is relative to her father
Who does escape from her house and father
Who has a cape that she rides on
Who fears that she is going to be in the house with out freedom
Who wants freedom
Resident of her house

Symbolic Butterflies

Our butterflies are designed and ready to be sent to Mexico for the winter! We'll see you in the spring!!

Your Weight on Other Worlds

http://www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/weight/

Do you remember the difference between mass and weight??? Does your weight or mass change if you travel to another planet? Check out this website and find out!

How much did you weigh on Mars? The moon???

Favorite Reading Strategies Website

http://reading.ecb.org/

Go to this website and click on the Kid's Section. This website has fun activities to teach you all those strategies you need to know to be a super reader.

Teachers, this site has lesson plans and colorful posters to print out!

Character Poems

Danina

She means dainty, beautiful, and gentle

She is the number 22

She is like fire red

Danina is a friend of the wind

Who does ride on a cape

Who has a great house

Who fears of a dull life

Who wants freedom

Resident of a house overlooking a beach


By Helayna

KIS

We are learning the important skill of inferencing. We use the KIS strategy to help us think through difficult comprehension questions.

K- Look and Underline Key Word
I - Infer
S-Support your inference with what you know from real life. Write a sentence next to your answer explaining your choice with a real world example.

So, remember, if an answer is not right in front of our eyes we have to KIS it!!

Listen to this song to remember how to infer!!

http://reading.ecb.org/downloads/in_Inferring.mp3

Folktales

For the next 3 weeks we will be reading folktales. We read a wonderful story called The Girl Who Loved the Wind and wrote a character poem about one of the characters. I will post the poems soon! To listen to this story go to :

http://www.homeworkproductions.com/Programs/DB1B7F46-DD8F-482F-96E9-821A28424C96.html

You can get some advice on how to write your own folktale by a real author here:

http://teacher.scholastic.com/writewit/mff/folktalewshop_index.htm

Writing

http://www.empoweringwriters.com/ is a wonderful resource for teaching writing.

We are learning how to add elaborative detail to our writing. Click below for a great list of sound words!

http://www.readwritethink.org/lesson_images/lesson104/sounds.pdf

We also need transition words:

http://jc-schools.net/write/transition.htm

This is also a great article on revising using the Explosion (adding action, description, feeling):
http://www.learner.org/workshops/middlewriting/images/pdf/W8ReadWriters.pdf

Self-discipline

Our powerful word for the month is self-discipline. Discipline means making yourself do what's right, fair and necessary even when you don't feel like it. Studies show that discipline is twice as important in predicting academic success as intelligence. Let's work hard this month on controlling our mind, body and actions!! Let's be like the wise old owl:

A wise old owl sat in a tree

The more he saw, the less he spoke;

The less he spoke, the more he heard;

Why aren't we all like that wise old bird?



Visit Dr. Robyn's blog for more informaton on discipline and other powerful parenting advice.

http://drrobyn.wordpress.com/

Virtual Science Fair Projects

This is a great website for teaching and learning about the scientific process. I used the site to teach the students about constants and variables and how to record data.

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/sciencefaircentral

Aztecs

In Texas History we learned about some of the indigenous groups that lived in Texas and Central and South America. I had an opportunity to visit the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza in January and here is a picture to prove it!

Monarch Butterfly

Fall!!! One of my favorite fall lessons is about the Monarch butterfly who makes its yearly migration to Michoacan, Mexico right about now.

Since our class is participating in the reading of The Very Hungry Caterpillar on Thursday, I decided to make this a butterflied themed week! http://www.readfortherecord.org/


On Thursday we will be making symbolic paper butterflies that will "fly" to Mexico for the winter and return in the spring all thanks to www.learner.org/jnorth/sm/index.html.

Verb-a-Pillar

On Monday we made a Verb-a-pillar out of pipe cleaners who can DO anything to learn about action verbs. The kids took Verb-a-pillar home with them and then wrote a journal entry about everything that Verbie did.

On Tuesday we fed Verbie a leaf full of helping verbs - is, was, were, has, have, had and will.

I usually make a Verb-man to teach verbs, but since this week we are studying about the Monarch butterfly I decided to change things up!

Clay Boats

Today we tested our clay boats to see which one would hold the most cargo. The winning boat held 43 grams!!! We learned about BUOYANCY!

Check out http://www.brainpop.com/ to watch a video on buoyancy!!