Ms. Bradley's Fourth & Fifth Grade Class

Blog Posts

2025 - 2026

October 2025

We have had such a wonderful past couple of weeks! There's so much to share. To the left you'll see a puzzle we've been working on and just finished as the bell was ringing today! Ask your child about it!

Below you'll find picture of students working on scientific sketches, nature journals, and an engineering projects.

Scientific Sketching

Nature Journals

Sailboat ENgineering Design CHallenge

Last week, Mrs. Gannon led us in an engineering design challenge! The challenge: students had to design and build a ship that uses wind power. In place of sailing on a body of water, students used wheels for their ship to move on land and a fan to represent wind.

Little Buddies

On Friday afternoons we've been spending time with our first grade buddies in Mrs. Falls class! Our first week together students took a few minutes to interview each other and then played outside. The last two weeks we've spent our time outside learning about Monarch Butterflies together. This Friday we were in the forest and students created their own animals using sticks, leaves, acorns, etc.

Painting!

Over the last couple weeks we've been doing some different painting projects. First we experimented painting with watercolors using a sponge. Students created all kind of different designs.

We also started a project that involves painting a sheet of paper to then use as part of a portrait for each student. For this painting students had the choice to use tempera paint or watercolors.

Index Card Towers (with a twist!)

At the beginning of every school year we always take time to engage in activities that build community, practice working together and give us a chance to learn about each other. I often call these challenges. One of our first challenges of the year was building towers out of only index cards. But there was a twist! They could only use an index card if they had written something on it that everyone in their group had in common. This had students asking each other questions like, what’s your favorite flavor of ice cream? How many siblings do you have? Do you have any pets? Etc. Finding things in common was a challenge! But they did it! Then they went on to build some pretty impressive towers. You can find pictures of some of the towers below. Some of these pictures are their final towers or some are early iterations.

Every group tried many different ways to build a tower and afterwards we talked about the importance of trying different ideas. I was floored by how well every group worked together. Everyone kept a positive attitude, listened to each other and stayed flexible.

2024 - 2025:

Technology PRoject: Amazon ANimal Illustrations

In January we began our Amazon Animal Scientific Illustration Projects. This has been an incredible multi-step project. We're getting close to the finish line but still have a bit of work to do! Students started by choosing an amazon animal they wanted to research and draw. We conducted research, wrote informational paragraphs, followed the steps to do a scientific sketch, used the Cricket to upload and then print their sketch, and now students are coloring their sketch with heat transfer markers so we can then iron their drawings onto a piece of fabric. In the end students will get their own sketch and all their sketches will be put together into a book. Check out the photos below!

Valentine's Day Buddy Lunch

Engineering: Windmill Challenge

Below you'll find photos of us working on an engineering challenge. The challenge: Can you build a working windmill that harnesses the most energy (one that rotates the fastest)? Students are using the engineering design process to work through this. Some are working in groups, pairs or have chosen to take on the challenge on their own! Two big leanring intentions with this project are:

I can practice failing and trying again (because that’s what engineers do)!
I can learn from others and allow others to learn from me.

It's important to me that students learn how to fail and pick themselves back up and keep trying. I feel it's also critically that they learn how to collaborate even if they're working on their own projects. We don't exist in vacuums and we all learn from each other all the time- this is a great and necessary thing!

Snow play with our little buddies!

Team Building

About once a month I move our seats around to give everyone an opportunity to sit with a new group of peers. This month we did some extra team building with their new "pods" (that's just what I call their desk clusters). It was a simple, but wonderfully fun activity: puzzles. I gave each pod a puzzle without the box and challenged them to solve it!

Gifts for Giving

The Thursday before Thanksgiving vacation and the first day back, we had our annual tradition of Gifts for Giving! We made most of our gifts before break. Then on the Monday we returned students made their own wrapping paper and wrapped their gifts. We were lucky enough to do this at the same time as our first grade buddies! Below you'll find some pictures of us crafting away!

Morpheme Word Sort

Most mornings our first lesson is Morpheme Magic. Morpheme Magic is a research-based program that teaches morphological awareness. During this time we learn the meanings of different prefixes and suffixes. A prefix we recently added to our toolbox was "un-" (not, opposite of or to undo/reverse). We then worked in small groups to sort a collection of "un-" words into two categories. Below are pictures of us sorting our words!

Web of Life

In science we've started learning about food chains. We started off talking about some vocabulary: predators, prey, carnivore, omnivore, herbivore, food chain, food web, matter, matter flow, consumer, and producer. After that we engaged in discussion around these food chain questions: What animals live in your neighborhood? What do these animals eat? What is eaten by these animals? Can this lead us to think of any new animals to look for?

We then played a game called Eat or Be Eaten! In this card game we all worked to build as many food chains as we could and get them as long as we could. The trickiest part was that if you had a card but hadn't put it into a food chain then it could be stolen by another player. It was a lot of fun! Check out some pictures of us playing below.

Cookie Decorating!

Carving Pumpkins with our Little Buddies

Last week on Thursday and Friday we carved pumpkins with our buddies. On Thursday we went outside to scoop out the "guts" of our pumpkins. On Friday we carved them up! If you came to the monster mash you may have seen them lining the forest walk out to the campfire. Check out some photos below.

Big & Little Buddies

This year Ms. Fecura and I are buddied up! All of our fifth and sixth graders have a little buddy (or two!). So far we've played outside, interviewed each other and today the first graders taught as a new math game. It's been so much getting to know our little buddies and I can tell them absolutely LOVE getting to know their big buddies!

Scientific Sketches

This week we worked on our third scientific sketches of the year! This time we went outside and everyone had a chance to pick their own piece of nature to sketch. It was so much fun to see all their different sketches! Check them out below. See if you can tell what the most popular pick was!

Below are our first scientific sketches of the year! We followed step by step directions to learn how to do a scientific sketch. I used a powerpoint from the California Academy of Sciences which was passed on to me from Mrs. Shedd. There are a few students who haven't finished yet but I was able to get pictures of most of their sketches. If you don't see your students I'll get it up later this week. I was incredibly impressed by everyone's attention to detail and "I wonder" questions.

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