Dear Parents, We have a BIG week coming up so I'm putting the important dates right at the top! Monday - Changing Bodies Talk. There are great resources in the email that was sent if you need them. Tuesday - Russels Mills One Room Schoolhouse! Students need to be on time to school so we can get dressed in our costumes and leave by 8:30am. Their Lunch on Tuesday should not need microwaving. Thursday - Prairie Day! If you haven't yet, please take a look at the google doc for volunteer opportunities and needed donations. Friday - Blue & Grey Day! We will not have homework next week since it will be so busy. I'm encouraging the kids to use some of that extra time to get more sleep! Portfolio Day
Math - Ms. Doherty's Big TripBefore I came back to Friends Academy, I started planning a backpacking trip to Mont Blanc in the Alps. I told the kids this week that I may be around for the class picnic on Tuesday, June 5, but that I won't be here on Monday or Wednesday that week. Since we have been studying decimals, I took the opportunity to get my students to help me with my planning! One very important part of backpacking is knowing how much weight you'll be carrying. On this trip my friend and I will be hiking a total of 105 miles in ten days and climbing a lot of elevation, so weight is even more important. I gave the students a list of all the gear we'd be bringing and the weight of each item (including my little friend Woodchuck who has been going on trips with me since I was 7. He weighs 1.8 oz). They then calculated how much the gear weighs and then which "group gear" (things like the tent or pot) should be carried by which person. This way my friend and I will have packs that weight similar amounts. I plan to use the information they found to help me pack! Getting UnstuckThis week we continued our conversation on what to do when we "get stuck" while learning. After reading "The Most Magnificent Thing," I drew this poster, and then we filled in what it feels like to be very FRUSTRATED or just stuck. Sometimes you are just too frustrated to keep thinking and you need to take a break instead. Being able to identify whether you're in the frustrated place or the stuck place is a huge leap forward. I'm also encouraging them to be more specific in their questions. Not being blessed with the power to read minds, we talked about how "Help me!" doesn't tell me anything about why they are stuck. Being more specific will help them get unstuck faster. Cultural BazaarWhile Blue & Grey Day was postponed, the Cultural Bazaar still took place. Students got to visit booths put on by the middle schoolers and learn about different countries around the world (and some imaginary places too!)
Dear Parents, Your efforts transporting, dressing and getting your kids ready last night are much appreciated. What a great concert! Since they were all dressed up, and the cherry tree is blooming, we thought it was time for a new picture! Which of course turned into a silly moment. :) Here's a sort of serious one! Spring ConcertGetting ready for the concert involved quite a few rehearsals this week. They did a great job learning all the transitions and really got the words and chords set in their minds. And we had to practice being backstage of course! Shrek was a big hit. MathWe went on a decimal scavenger hunt in math this week. Each decimal had a clue for the next one. When they found them all they had to line them up in order on their number lines. Book Buzz!Two of our very own got up and did a book buzz at All School Meeting this week. Ruby on the Outside sounds like a great book! Excellent job Vanessa and Lily! What's at the top of your Mountain?We've added to our bulletin board, this time identifying things we'd like to work on. Each student picked one thing they'd like to improve and then we picked a second one together. I encourage you to talk to your student about what they picked and why they picked it. We'll continue to have mini lessons about areas of improvement so that we can make progress toward our goals. This week we talked about improving our ability to get "unstuck" on an assignment or get back to "just right" if we're frustrated with the work. The book "The Most Magnificent Thing" by Ashley Spires helped us think about these things. Important DatesLots of things coming down the pipe, two big ones just for fourth grade!
5/16 - Portfolio Day, 8:45-9:45 am in your child's classroom. A day to come see what we've been up to in fourth grade. 5/18 - Blue & Grey Day 5/22 - One Room schoolhouse field trip 5/24 Prairie Day! - If you haven't had a chance to look at the google doc, please check it out. We are looking for donations and volunteers! Dear Parents, Happy Spring! I think it's finally here to stay. We had a fabulous time meeting the students' grandfriends on Friday, thank you for helping get the word out to your families! Grandfriends DayWhat fun! We had a great day introducing the grandfriends to our classroom and the things we've been learning. We made cornbread (a huge hit! both in the making and the eating!), we churned butter, we learned about quilts and we guessed the uses of old pioneer artifacts. It was a smashing success. Sharing a GoNoodle dance! The students picked one they thought would be doable from standing or a chair, but the grandfriends were a bit shy of joining in. Making butter! The churn was given to me on my tenth Christmas because I so badly wanted to be a Pioneer! You can also see our strengths and mountains bulletin board in the background. Working on designing quilt blocks. Celebrating our StrengthsWe have finished our "easier-harder" sheets from last week and spent this week talking about and discovering our strengths. This proved to be a challenging experience, but also a rewarding one. Each strength presented students with two possibilities; having it as a strength, or not having it yet. For some there was concern that they would have no strengths. My favorite part of this activity was when those students realized that they had real, genuine strengths that they could take pride in. There were guidelines for determining whether or not to claim a certain strength, but in the end I left the choice with each student. I encourage you to talk to your child about which strengths they determined were theirs. In many cases they fully embody the strength they chose, and in some cases they will continue to grow into their strength. I do think a lot of thought was put into the choices and I commend them for it. I also recognize the challenge of deciding! I've included the descriptions of each strength below because the definitions may differ from those familiar to you. Scaling our MountainsThis coming week we'll start identifying the skills we want to improve. Each student has a "Mountain" on the bulletin board atop which they will post their choices. Everyone will choose one thing they want to improve and then I will collaborate with each student on a second skill. Through the next few weeks they will be looking at ways they are making progress toward their goals. This will also be part of their homework. If you notice improvements or actions that show progress, please share them with your student so they can add them to the board at school! Native American Shields with Mr. FowlerDuring our mix it up social studies time, we've had the opportunity to learn from Maya's dad Mr. Fowler. Mr. Fowler is Choctaw and he's been teaching us about peace shields. Each student is creating a shield to represent themselves and the tribe they are studying. Thanks to some generous donations, the shields will eventually be painted onto fabric and hung in embroidery hoops. If there are any symbols that have meaning for your family, please share them with your student! Important Dates5/16 - Portfolio Day
5/18 - Blue & Grey day 5/22 - Field trip to one room schoolhouse 5/24 - Prairie Day! (Email with further information will be sent shortly) Dear Parents, Another exciting and busy week! Research continues on Native American tribes, rafts were built and launched, and we thought a lot about how we learn. Make sure to check out the important dates at the bottom, big events are coming up! Easier or Harder?As I've gotten to better know this group of 9 and 10 year olds, one area has contrasted greatly with my work with older students. Fourth graders are just starting to develop self-awareness of their own strengths and skills in academics and social situations. To help us start a conversation and to give the students language to have the conversation, we worked on categorizing about 50 skills onto "This is easier for me" or "This is harder for me" sheets. Students did a wonderful job thinking about each skill and then deciding which sheet to glue it to. Here are a few examples of skills: Next week we'll use these sheets to figure out our strengths. Everyone is good at something, and no one is good at everything. Learning that each person has unique and important strengths is a critical part of learning that each student brings value to the classroom community. Raft Building and Launch!
We set out at 11:30 and the adventure began as soon as we entered the woods. Mud! Giant puddles! HUGE trees down in the path! Finally, we made it to the stone bridge and the excitement began! Each student (or team of students) launched their raft from the upstream side of the bridge as everyone chanted their name. The raft would slowly start to move forward, and then it would hit a small eddy and start to rush under the bridge. Oh the squeals and cheers! They would RUN across to the other side of the bridge, eager to be the first to see the raft come out. Ms. Pindell and a helper did their best to rescue each raft as it came through. Many rafts were rescued, some rafts were rescued farther down the river and some escaped and made their merry way down to a tangle of trees. Every raft floated beautifully! Our way home reminded us all that fun can come in many forms. One way to categorize fun is by Type 1 and Type 2 fun: Type 1 is fun in the moment, Type 2 is often not fun in the moment, but very fun in the telling! Walking by any fourth grade classroom this afternoon you would have seen the trail of muddy boots and shoes (including teachers'!). What an adventure! Important DatesGrandfriends Day - May 4From 10 to noon, we will welcome Grandfriends to the school. We are eager to meet our students special guests. Please let me know if your student has grandfriends coming. Spring Concert - May 10Dear Lower School families, On Thursday, May 10th at 6:00 p.m., we will be presenting our annual Spring Concert, featuring performances by students in early childhood through grade five, plus our Band of Friends. The concert should last about an hour and a quarter. Students should arrive at school by 5:45 and go directly to their classrooms. This is a "dress event" for students. Dress pants and shirts with collars (no coat and tie required), dresses, skirts, and blouses, or comparable dress attire are required for this special performance. Students who may be sitting on the stage to play instruments should wear slacks or leggings. We have been enjoying the preparation for this event and look forward to seeing you all there. Sincerely, Mr. Bean and Mr. Murdock Portfolio Day - May 16Portfolio Showcase 2018: You’re Invited to Celebrate a Year of Growth!
We are so proud of the tremendous growth of our students, and as the year draws to a close we would like to share with you a glimpse of their progress. Please join us for a morning celebration! Beginning at 8:15 with All-School Meeting, we’ll come together as a school to kick-start this year-in-review. Then parents will join students back in their classrooms or advisories in order to experience carefully selected reflections on what their challenges and successes were. The Showcase will end at approximately 10:00, but feel free to join us for coffee on the Beech Tree Terrace for a bit afterward! We hope you’ll be able to share in this special day! Dear Parents, A quick week, but we still got a lot in! Research projects, raft planning, and more. Here's some highlights. GoNoodle!Sometimes we all need a little brain break and recess isn't soon enough. About twice a day, we pause for 3-5 minutes and GoNoodle! GoNoodle is a web app of guided dances, call and repeat, obstacle courses, and stretching that give students a brain boost. It's a big hit in our room and I've found students to be more focused afterwards. If your student is interested in looking at home, go to gonoodle.com! Research ProjectWe've started our research project on Native American tribes. Before picking a tribe they'd like to research, students did a book walk. They looked through our research collection and got to learn a little bit about a lot of tribes. Next week we'll start the specific research and students will learn how to find key information and take notes from multiple sources. MathNext week will be our last week of fractions. We'll spend the week focused on fractions of a set and word problems. If you or your student are interested in doing a little extra math at home, quick questions like the ones below will be useful for everyone. Simplifying Fractions: What is 6/8 in simplest form? (to make this type of question just pick a fraction and multiple the top and bottom by the same number: 1/3 -> 1*3 and 3*3 = 3/9) Answer: 3/4 because you can divide 6 and 8 by 2. Changing from mixed numbers to improper fractions and back: What's 4 3/5 as an improper fraction? Answer: 23/5 How many fifths are in one whole? 5 How many fifths are in four wholes? 20 (4 x 5) How many more fifths do we have? 3 So all together it is 23/5. What's 11/3 as a mixed number? Answer: 3 2/3 How many wholes can you make from 11 thirds? 3 (or How many times does 3 go into 11) How many thirds are left over? 2 So all together it is 3 2/3 Fractions of a set: What is 1/4 (or any fraction with a denominator < 12) of 20 (or any number divisible by the denominator)? Important Dates4/25 Free Yoga Nidra workshop (registration required, let me know if you didn't get the email!)
5/4 Grandfriends Day, noon dismissal 5/10 Spring Concert 5/16 Portfolio Showcase 5/18 Blue & Grey Day, 8th grade carnival Dear Parents, It was lovely meeting so many of you! I hope you all get to enjoy the three day weekend. We are finally starting to see signs of spring, to celebrate we all played a game together. WAH!Wah!, a game I learned as a camp counselor is a fun group game in which you all pretend to be trees and tree cutters. You throw your hands up shouting WAH! and then those next to you swing their arms as if they are going to cut you down. You then drop your arms to point at someone and they throw up their arms. It's fast and loud and very fun! Apple Vally SchoolThis week we started our raft designs. Each family is building one (or more!) rafts that we will eventually float on the river by campus. Before you can build something you have to design it, so on Thursday each group worked on a Technical Drawing with labels and measurement for their raft. We did determine that you can't actually scale down the weight of a wagon to little raft size... A math teacher at heart, I found it very interesting that when you scale rafts, you can't scale the weight. A bigger raft holds way more weight than a small raft! MathWe are continuing our fractions unit. This week we focused on fractions of a set. We used egg cartons to think about 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 or 1/6 of 12. The trickiest part for students is remembering that if the problem says: What is 3/5 of 20? First you divide 20 into 5 equal groups, not groups of 5. Social Studies & WritingWe spent time learning about the Louisiana Purchase and the Native American population decline this week. Students learned that 15 million dollars isn't very much to pay for so much land. Since big numbers are hard to wrap your head around, we imagined how long it would take to earn 15 million dollars if we earned a dollar a second (about five and a half months). Then we looked at how long it would take to earn 1 trillion dollars which is roughly the federal government's current budget. It takes over 37,000 years! Fifteen million really seemed like a good deal after that! As we discuss westward expansion we're learning from the perspectives of the settlers and those of the Native Americans. Additional land brought many new opportunities to the new United States including new trade routes and land for farming. Using interactive maps we've also looked at how conquest and war negatively impacted the Native American population. We used little pieces of paper to really understand the size of the numbers. Each piece equals 600 people.
Starting next week Social Studies and Writing will join hands as we embark on our research project. Each student will research and become expert on a Native American tribe. They will all publish a final bound report on what they have learned. Important Dates4/16 - No School! Patriots Day
4/19 - Arts & Poetry Night 4/21 - Happy Birthday Victoria! 5/4 - Grandfriend's Day 5/10 - Spring Concert Dear Parents, What a way to start April! Snow, rain, sun and wind, we've had it all. It hasn't stopped anyone from playing hard at recess though. On Tuesday and Thursday Lynn Hoopes came and taught a poetry lesson. Each student wrote a poem inspired by a painting they did in art class. The poems and art will be displayed at the art show coming up. I was very impressed by the language and imagery the students came up with! We also got creative in a different way! As a team building activity the class broke into groups of four and each group was given an ordinary object: a pencil, and a binder clip. Their job? Come up with as many uses for the object as possible without including it's actual use! Each team came up with around 40 uses!!! On Wednesday Mr. Bordelon came to talk to the whole school about diversity, equity and inclusion. Then we got to meet with him as a fourth grade. He told us about moments in history we probably had never heard. For instance, did you know that the first slave, John Punch, is an ancestor of Barack Obama? Social StudiesApple Valley School has begun! With old time rules and fate cards, students earn points to graduate. We made journals for each student and took a portrait for the front. So far, they've written about what a day would have been like, what they think of the old rules for teachers, and how they came to Apple Valley. We're also going to spend a good amount of time talking about how Westward Expansion impacted the Native Americans. If you have any books or resources you like, please let me know! MathWe've continued to talk about fractions in math. This week we focused on fractions that add to greater than 1. Students used fraction tools to change an improper fraction (when the numerator is greater than the denominator) into mixed numbers (a whole number with a fractional part). Here's an example! First we represent the problem with the fraction tools. Then change the fractions so they have a common denominator. For this step, some students prefer exchanging the fraction pieces and some prefer the numeric (multiplication) strategy. Then add the fractions! If it's an improper fraction they have to make as many wholes as they can and see what fraction is left over. The mixed number becomes the number of wholes and then the fraction left over. If your child likes using the tools, but either lost or tossed the cut out sheets sent home, they can use a web app to make fractions. Dance Competition! Students worked on dance routines in PE and performed them today! It was so fun to see what they had come up with. Everyone did an amazing job! (Sorry the photos are a bit blurry, so frustrating!) Class Challenge!We've been talking about how important healthy food is for energy. Today I challenged the class (including me!) to try one food they think they don't like. If everyone does it by next Friday, we'll add 15 minutes to recess! We decided it can be a new food they're not sure of, a food they only sort of dislike, or, if they're feeling brave, a food they really don't like! I'm not sure what I'll pick yet, maybe broccoli. Last I checked, I didn't like it very much, but things can change! Important DatesThursday 4/12 - Band of Friends sings at Pilgrim United Church of Christ
Friday 4/13 - No school for students, Parent Teacher conferences Monday 4/16 - No school, Patriot's day Thursday 4/19 - Arts and Poetry Night There is still time to sign up for conferences! I know the last conferences were recent, but it would be great to meet you all and hear your perspective on your child's learning. Sign up outside the classroom or using the button below. Dear families, It was another busy and exciting week! On Monday, we attended a portion of the 8th grade's TED talks. It was interesting learning about the various topics that students chose to explore. It also was a great connection to our writing, because we were able to identify familiar elements of opinion/persuasive essays that appeared in the 8th graders' speeches. On Wednesday, the 4th grade shared their interactive civil rights timeline presentation at All School Meeting. Students received many compliments from the FA community for their outstanding performance and public speaking! Also on Wednesday, we had a second visit from Terry Wolkowicz from the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra. Terry shared a model salt marsh ecosystem that illustrated the concept of balance in ecology, Students analyzed the ecosystem to look for elements of stability as well as imbalance. They then explored the concept of balance in classical music to see how composers achieve balance through the orchestration of musical parts among musical instruments. Finally, on Friday we visited the 5th grade's Wax Museum. 4th graders were able to get a sneak peak at one of the major projects that they will take part in next year. For the wax museum, 5th graders researched figures from the American Revolution and then presented their learning in full costume as they performed speeches that they wrote from their figure's perspective. A few curriculum highlights from the week
Social Studies - Preparation for our civil rights All School Meeting presentation! Language Arts - Reading The Liberation of Gabriel King - Publishing Appreciation Essays - Spelling - Keyboarding practice Math - Experimenting with probability - Real-world data and probability problems Looking Ahead... Ms. Doherty will be joining our class on Monday, March 5th, and will spend the entire week getting to know the students and learning our classroom routines. We are excited to welcome her to 4th grade! Spring vacation begins on March 12th. Ms. Doherty will then be taking my place as I begin my maternity leave when students return from break on March 26th. Dear families, On Wednesday, students celebrated the 100th day of school and all of their hard work preparing for conferences with a 4th grade pajama day! One of the highlights that day was in math where students played a game called Roll 100. This game required students to take turns rolling a die and then adding, subtracting, multiplying, or dividing their rolls until they were able to reach exactly 100. Students also visited Ms.Bullard’s class and enjoyed reading with kindergarten buddies! A few curriculum highlights from the week Social Studies - 4th graders spent time discussing civil rights events and working on adding events to poster boards. These will be used for a life-sized game of Timeline that students will lead at next week's All School Meeting. In the game, 4th graders will present events from the Civil Rights Movement and have members of the school community guess where they are placed in on an interactive timeline. As always, families are welcome to join us! Language Arts - We continue reading and discussing The Liberation of Gabriel King as a class. Along with being a fun story, this book has been a great conversation starter both from a historical standpoint and for discussing empathy. We have been talking about the ways in which the characters in the book look out for each other and show kindness. In writing we have used this as a jumping off point for our current essay assignment. Students have been thinking about the people in their own lives who look out for them, and show them kindness and empathy. They have been writing a piece describing a person who they appreciate for having these qualities. - Spelling - Keyboarding practice Math - Finding probability - Showing probability as a fraction - Simplifying fractions - "Roll 100" Looking Ahead... Wednesday, February 28th the fourth grade will be giving a special civil rights movement themed presentation at All School Meeting. Spring break will begin on Monday, March 12th |
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April 2018
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