I'm Learning Too!

What have you been doing while your student teacher is full-time teaching in your room the past few weeks? In one word...READING! :) I have kept busy reading books and researching Math Workshop and Guided Math groups. I'm excited to get back into my classroom and apply what I've learned from all of my reading!

Words Their Way

As you probably know, we have begun a new spelling curriculum in all of the fourth grade classrooms. We are using "Words Their Way". Each student was pretested to determine which "word sort" they were developmentally ready for. For right now, we will spend two weeks on each "word sort". 

The fourth graders spend time sorting their words, writing sentences, looking up definitions, playing games (http://www.spellingcity.com/mepo4/) and highlighting spelling patterns in their words. By the end of the second week your child should be able to sort and spell all of the words in the sort.

Practicing words with a window marker.

Using the iPads to look up word definitions on dictionary.com

Playing games on Spellingcity.com to practice words.

Highlighting spelling patterns

Ms. G and Halloween

The fourth graders are excited to have a new face in our classroom! Ms. Geurink is our student teacher from Iowa Wesleyan College. She will be with us until the beginning of December. Ms. G did a really fun math project with the students called "Create Your Own Classroom". They had to use many important math skills.

The fourth graders had fun last Friday during the Halloween Party. Thank you to everyone that contributed to our party! :)

Dog Yard

We have been working on figuring the area and perimeter of rectangles in fourth grade math. The fourth graders applied those skills when working on their "Dog Yard" project. They had fun planning and constructing their dog yards. :)

Equal Shares

This week we did some activities exploring fractions. We talked about "equal shares". We worked in groups to solve problems about splitting items up evenly. One example is: If you had 4 people and 6 brownies, how much would each person get?" The fourth graders drew pictures and talked with their desk groups to figure out the answers. We talked about their answers, how they solved the question and how to write their answers. 

This activity came from the book Extending Children's Mathematics; Fractions and Decimals. I will continue to use activities from this book all year long to help the students grasp the concepts. Below are some examples of how students worked to solve the problems.

The Py(ramid) Game

This week I introduced the Py (pronounced "pie") game to the fourth graders. The Py game is a great way for students to practice all of the basic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. It is a game that I used with my first graders at Morning Sun, but is easily adaptable to all levels of learners. We are fortunate to have quite a few sets of the game in our classroom! Be sure to ask your favorite fourth grader about the Py game. :)

Playing the Py game gives students extra practice in basic math computation.

A Py game in progress.

The winner of the Py game is the player that places his/her game piece at the top of the pyramid.

Mr. Hopper

Kira brought a visitor to class today...a toad! He was in a bucket and was rather loud during class, so we decided to release him in our outdoor classroom. We took a quick break and went outside to give him a new home. Mr. Hopper, so affectionately named by the girls in our class, didn't take long to hop away into the plants. :)

The view out our classroom window of the outdoor classroom.