This week at GATE the 4th graders started their final unit of the year to fit with the 4th grade theme of Ethics. They will be learning about light pollution and the Idaho Dark Sky Reserve. The unit will culminate with a light pollution reduction engineering challenge.

To introduce the topic this week, we first focused on the wonder of the stars. The 4th graders started by writing haikus with the topics of Stars, Darkness, Space, and Night. Only two students had ever written a haiku before, and I was super impressed with the depths that their poems reached! Most students chose to read at least one of their poems for the class.

We then created star finder maps that the students should be able to use on a clear night in town, or even better on a camping trip this summer.

Lastly, the students got a blank map of the night sky in the northern hemisphere summer and created their own constellation.

All three pieces of this work should have been added their their Book Creator portfolios. This portion of the work was done after lunch when I unfortunately had to be out for another district training. I wish they were not all scheduled on Wednesdays, but the 4th graders got a good report from the guest teacher that was with them for the last 80 minutes of the day.