We love our Moms!

Today we talked about our mothers and how special they are to us! We are so thankful for such amazing people in our lives and we want to wish everyone a Happy Mother's Day!

(be sure your child gives you the card they made for you today)  

“Mothers and their children are in a category all their own. There’s no bond so strong in the entire world. No love so instantaneous and forgiving.” —Gail Tsukiyama

I had students complete the following statement about their mom today....

I love you because....

Magnetism

We are currently learning all about magnets and this week students learned ways to make an electromagnet stronger. There are 3 ways and students learned these quickly when trying to create their own. 

Electromagnets

When an electric current flows in a wire it creates a magnetic field around the wire.

By winding the wire into a coil we can strengthen the magnetic field. Electromagnets are made from coils like this.

Making an electromagnet stronger

We can make an electromagnet stronger by doing these things:

• wrapping the coil around an iron core
• adding more turns to the coil
• increasing the current flowing through the coil.

Book Clubs On the 4th Grade Hall

CHOICE 

When starting book clubs this is the question we pondered on, do we give the students a choice of what to read or just assign books to certain groups? We decided that if we wanted the students to have a love for reading we must first give them the choice of what they want to read, what interests them, what makes them WANT to go home every night and pick up the book to read and then tell
their friends about.
We started out with each teacher picking around 10 books for the class to choose from and then after reading the book jacket for each book the group would decide on which one they wanted to read. We never expected the students to be SO excited about reading a book! Students were also given 5 jobs to pick from in each group that they wanted pursue for a certain time period, everyone worked very well sorting out the jobs and deciding who would be the best at what. When students got their jobs they immediately took action and started doing what they could to make sure they did their best to provide for their group.

These are the different jobs students could choose from: 

Stellar Summarizer

Word Wizard

Artful Artist 

Literary Luminary

Director 

I won't explain the jobs just yet, I will let the students blog about their jobs because they really are important to them and they are doing wonderful taking responsibility for the things their job requires.



Here are the books the students chose and some pictures from our first week doing Book Clubs. Each Friday one student volunteers to bring snacks for his/her group and they have a group discussion on the papers they filled out on their book and what they thought was interesting about the book so far.
At first we were a little worried about discussions going on other than book club discussions but that has definitely not been the case! Students are so engaged and eager to share with their peers and they can't wait to discuss what they have learned or what questions they still have. Stay tuned for the students to blog about their books in the upcoming weeks.

Here are a few pictures of the students and their first week with book clubs! 

MAP Incentive Spa and Sports Day

To reward students for their work on the MAP reading assessment, students had the choice of going to a Spa day or Sport day. Our class did an outstanding job on the MAP reading assessment and had 100% growth so everyone got their choice of what they wanted to do! I was in the room with the SPA picks so here are a few pictures.

The spa day consisted of soaking the hands with warm water, lotion hand massage from teacher, and nails painted by a friend or teacher. 

Great job everyone!!! 

Culminating Assessment

 At the end of researching students for our Around the World in 40 Days PBL students were required to create their own magazine, travel brochure, or children's book to display what they have learned while traveling. 
 Here are a few pictures of the going through the brainstorming process: 

Students are working really hard create their final products. I will post pictures of the final products soon. 

Abigail's book on the Polar Region 

Breanna's book on the Swamp Region

Harley's book on the Polar Region