First week in 4th grade!

To say we had a great week would be an understatement....this class dug right in this week and we had a FANTASTIC week! 

Day 1- 

We all were extremely nervous for the FIRST day of school so we read and analyzed the "What If" poem by Shel Silverstein.

Next, we created our own "What If" poem. 

The next day we begin discussing the important skills you need to be a 21st century learner, the process of F.A.I.L and having a growth mindset. We all decided one important aspect of all these would be being able to cooperatively collaborate with your teammates. 

I gave students 6 cups and a rubber band with 4 strings tied around it. 

The task: only using the yarn, stack your cups like the figure below: 

The students were eager to start

Finally, after multiple attempts and failing, each group was able to stack all the cups successfully! After each group was finished we all worked as a team to come up with our team guidelines for the year. 

We also discussed the land bridge theory and continents. I told students artifacts helped scientists come up with this theory of how the Land Bridge Theory came about and this started a whole list of WONDERS.....

The next day Holden brought in two artifacts from home that he had found in St. Thomas and wanted to know if we knew what they were. Everyone was puzzled and curious so we tweeted Wonderopolis to see if they could help us. 

Within a few hours the Wonderopolis team went to work and we had tons of responses on what these may be. Here are a few responses we received, the students were in awe that their wonderings went OUTSIDE the classroom and people all over were commenting back. 

 Later on in the week we kicked off our "Choose Kind" PBL unit with discussing the word KINDNESS, making kindness keychains, and starting the novel, Wonder. 

Look for updates on the book and student reviews on the blog. Also, updates on our PBL coming soon! 

On Friday, we looked at various memoirs (including a memoir Ms. Gidaro wrote)and wrote down all of the characteristics that made up a memoir.We will be writing our very own memoirs next week in class. 

Later on that day our class and Mrs. Johnson's class experienced F.A.I.L like no other. Here is what happened: 

We were discussing Process Skills and how we were going to make "Elephant Toothpaste" discussing quantitative and quantitative observations. We had all the materials we needed (Dawn, Hydrogen Peroxide, and Yeast) and were ready to go! 

The entire classes eagerly watched as I poured the ingredients carefully into the water bottle. Last year when we did the same experiment the ingredients exploded out of the bottle; well this year they just sat there in the bottle, boring and still. The students were still great sports and when I squeezed the bottle to make some come out they loved it, however this isn't the "Explosion" Mrs. Johnson and I were wanting. 

We aren't sure what happened??? We discussed afterwards what the problem may be and ways we could fix it. Could it be the yeast was expired? The water wasn't warm enough when we mixed the yeast and this caused it to settle instead of exploding? We also discussed how this happens ALL the time in life and it is perfectly FINE! F.A.I.L ing is fine because we will learn from this experiment that went wrong and try again on Monday. 

Any other ideas on what may have went wrong and what we need to change when we do the experiment again on Monday? 

Thank you for a GREAT start this week and allowing me to teach and love your beautiful, curious, and humble children! We are starting off great and I can't wait to see what the rest of the year holds! 

-Mrs. Gault