Students learning how to be Upstanders from the examples of Upstanders in history: Marcellino Family- 2010- Standing up for people with special needs; Miep Gies- 1944- Saving Anne Frank's story; Hudson Taylor- 2010- working to stop gay hate speech; Chiune Sugihara- 1940- helping refugees in need; Emily and Sarah Buder- 2017- taking a stand against bullying; Rosa Parks- 1955- fighting for Civil Rights.

Design Thinking Process

February 28-March 11, 2022

February 14-27, 2022

Please enjoy the pictures! Ask your student to share what they have been learning.

Class Morning Meeting

Sharing Current Event Research

We wanted to discover the role fungi play in decomposing dead materials and in creating soil. Fourth graders made Mold Terrariums! They planned and conducted an investigation to discover the factors affecting decomposition. First, they filled Ziploc bags with different types of foods and changed environmental conditions to study how different variables affect mold growth. We will be observing the mold growth over a period of two weeks to see which change affected the growth of mold.

Morning Meeting: Current Events

Each Tuesday, two fourth graders share their current event project. Each student takes time to research an article in Time For Kids or Dogo News that they feel is important and has an impact on our lives. After carefully reading the article and writing a paragraph to summarize the article and explain its importance, students create a poster to share with the class. Then, they practice presenting their poster until they feel they are ready to present to the class. After each presentation, we have a time called "Questions, Comments and Compliments." Students are eager to learn more by asking questions of the class expert, share their connections with the topic and give compliments for a job well done!

Integrated Unit: Animals & Ecosystems

Students became scientists observing the behavior of animals in their habitat. Students watch videos of different animals that live in groups to simulate observing them in their natural habitats. After watching videos of Snow Monkeys in northern Japan, Bison in Yellowstone National Park, Meerkats and Ravens, they discussed and recorded their observations. Using these observations, students constructed an explanation of how living in groups helps these animals survive.

The next activity in our Integrated Unit: Animals & Ecosystems was answering the question, "What Do Plants Eat?" For this question, students learned about the largest living thing in the world, a sequoia, growing in eastern California. Because it weighs 4,000,000 pounds, this tree was given its own name, General Sherman! Students were asked, where does all that 4,000,000 pounds of tree come from and since it started as a small seed, how did it gain so much weight? After taking a vote, most students hypothesized that plants eat soil. Then students learned about the scientist, Jan van Helmont, who discovered that plants do not eat soil. Continuing the search for what makes plants gain weight, students learned that on the underside of leaves, plants have little mouths, called stomata, that take in air. This led to the question, "Does air weigh anything?" Students conducted an experiment using balloons on a balance scale. They slowly let air out of the balloons only on one side of the scale and found that air does weigh something! This solved the mystery, What Do Plants Eat? Air and water!

Math

This week, we finished Unit 3: Extending Operations to Fractions.

In this unit, there were several goals:

• Learn to add and subtract fractions with like denominators, and to add and subtract tenths and hundredths.

• Represent and solve problems involving multiplication of a fraction by a whole number

• Create and analyze line plots that display measurement data in fractions of a unit

• Represent and solve problems that involve the addition and subtraction of fractions and mixed numbers, including measurements presented in line plots.

• Use various strategies to add and subtract fractions and mixed numbers with like denominators.

• Reason about equivalence to add tenths and hundredths.

• Reason about equivalence to solve problems involving addition and subtraction of fractions and mixed numbers.

Each math class begins with a warm-up to get our math brains working! One of the warm-ups in 4th grade is called Notice and Wonder. This warm up invites asks students: “What do you notice? What do you wonder?” By thinking about things they notice and wonder, students gain entry into the context and might have their curiosity piqued. Students learn to make sense of problems by taking steps to become familiar with a context and the mathematics that might be involved. Another warm up is called True or False. These warm ups do not have ONE right answer. Any answer is correct as long as students explain their reasoning. At the beginning of the school year this was completely new and students struggled to share answers. Now, sometimes there are as many as 10 or more different answers and explanations! It's exciting to see such confident mathematicians!

January 10-21, 2022

Integrated Unit: Animals and Ecosystems

Recess on the Ice!