Happy Halloween!

Sorry for the lack of posts this week - our schedule has been CRAZY!  I will be posting a ton of pictures from the past week in the next few days so keep an eye out!

Have a safe Halloween and enjoy your festivities!  Write a star on your planner for bonus points for tonight!  :)

Autumn Artwork: Harvest Moon Silhouettes

Our fourth graders were really excited to have our first two art projects with Mrs. Loubet!   Our art project took two sessions to complete because of the painting but it was well worth it!

Students started by creating a harvest moon.  They had red, orange, yellow, and white which were all used to create a mix of colors and shades that made the moon blend perfectly and in a gradient.

From there, students added silhouettes of something fall/Halloween/harvest onto the background to give a shadowy silhouette illusion.  Here is the result!

They turned out great!!  I'm so impressed and can't wait to see what we do next for art - this is such an artsy group!  Write ART on your planner for bonus points tonight!

Junior Achievement

Today was our first day welcoming our visitors Nita and Kar Mun to our classroom.  They are two fantastic volunteers from SPU who are volunteering for Junior Achievement and teaching us all about being and becoming an entrepreneur!  First we talked about the four different areas where entrepreneurs can choose to create a new product: food/drinks, sports, technology, and entertainment.

Ask your child to think of an entrepreneur that fits into one of those categories!

Then, we brainstormed ideas about what makes an entrepreneur successful.  Students had a great list traits like:

Great vocabulary!  Perseverance, honest...

Determined, invention needs to be useful, kind...

Advertisement, making what people want...

Doesn't use the consumer, prepared to work, "holiday decorated building"... the holidays apparently are important to our class!  Who would have guessed with Halloween right around the corner, right?! :)

And lastly, correspondent and "they have to know when the beat drops".... absolutely my favorite! :)

Junior Achievement is coming to visit 4 more times and I can't wait to see what we do next.  Write JA on your planner for bonus points for tonight!

Guest Blogger: Ashton

 Classroom points and the mystery bonus!!!
 In our classroom (P4) each table group can earn points for being on task, working hard, doing a good job on your work, etc.  Every once in a while however many points the table with the least amount of points has earned is how much points the class will have. With those points the class can get prizes like popcorn, extra recess, being able to watch a movie, etc.
            Every Monday morning every table has a choice to participate in something called a mystery bonus. After every table has told Mrs. Lippert if they want to participate in the mystery bonus Mrs. Lippert opens up an envelope and pulls out a card. It either says you will earn some points, or lose some points. Every table who participates in the mystery bonus has to either lose the points the card says or win the points the card says.
                                                                                                                 Sincerely,
                                                                                                                 Ashton

**Thanks Ashton for helping others understand more about our classroom!  I love that you're helping others learn more about what we do in P4.  So far the mystery bonus has been pretty poor!  Twice students have lost over 50 points!  Luckily the students are doing a great job making up those points!

Write Ashton on your planner for tonight to earn extra points for your table!

Guest Blogger: Harrison!

Each week our class has a job called the class blogger.  As 4th graders it's important that students are getting better and better at typing and so students are asked to submit a blog post during the week either as a news piece for the classroom, a creative writing piece, etc.  Anything they want to write and feel like others would like to read about!  It's always fun to see what people come up with and I love to see their creativity shine in this way!


This week Harrison is our class blogger and he already has a post for us:

This week it was the 2^nd week of music also the class finished Frindle and were also starting a new book called Clementine. There is a new station we have called word work. Its Monday so we all have new must do’s :)

Write HARRISON on your planner tonight for bonus points!

DonorsChoose.org: Bringing Social Studies Alive!

Help our class bring literacy and social studies together in an exciting form!  Our class uses an AMAZING site called DonorsChoose.org to submit projects for supplies that our classroom needs to help all students become successful readers and help bring social studies alive in an engaging format.  Visit the link HERE to see our current project and help support our class.  AND, since our project JUST posted, the DonorsChoose.org Board of Directors will match any donations made by using the promo code INSPIRE.  Enter that in at check out and double your donation!  Thanks so much for supporting this wonderful group of students!

Anchor Charts: Reading, Nouns, Summarizing

This post is a catch-up post from throughout the year - enjoy!

We started the year by talking about different types of nouns - 4th graders did a great job remembering that nouns are people, places, things and were surprised to learn that IDEAS was the other category.  It is pretty tricky so we didn't try to add many ideas to that category.

Today we started elapsed time in math.  Elapsed time is that subject that continues to trick students throughout the year.  I wanted to make an anchor chart that helped students learn the trick to calculate time with the hours first, then the minutes!  The t-chart method really seemed to help give a visual!

This is a classic Pinterest-inspired activity I love doing at the beginning of the year.  I post these giant posters around the room with various questions.  Students are given time to walk around the room in a gallery walk (silent, writing answers on post-it notes) and then we talk about the general results.  It's always a lot of fun and very informative of what students will let you know in this anonymous situation.

We started learning about historical fiction and I used this anchor chart based on one I saw on Life in 4B and felt like it fit perfectly with what I needed!  We used the mentor text, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt by Deborah Hopkinson to identify the real information in the story as well as the pieces that are imaginary (the fictional pieces).

We then used Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt to identify the parts of a plot (title, setting [both time and place], main characters, problem and solution).  Students then took that plot chart and wrote a summary of the story.  This was the story that we did together as a class.  The students then wrote their own summary of The Junkyard Wonders by Patricia Polacco

Issaquah Fish Hatchery

Our first field trip was a huge success and a lot of fun!  Off we went to the Issaquah Fish Hatchery and learned a ton about salmon.  4th grade is so lucky to be the group at North Beach that gets to raise salmon from eggs to fry and it is a super fun experience!

We split into groups and got a great tour from the wonderful FISH volunteers.

Salmon were actually swimming up stream and trying to spawn in the river.  

We learned that as the salmon started coming in from the ocean, their body emits a certain chemical that starts to break down their bodies before they are even dead.  Their fins turn white because they are actually starting to decompose while they are alive!

The salmon here had already spawned and died.  Ask your student why we should leave the salmon there to decompose in the river instead of removing it.

The salmon tried as hard as they could to jump over the weir and get upstream.  Their brains literally only are programmed to get to a place where they can spawn at this point so they get pretty beat up.

This is the salmon ladder that the salmon climb up to get to the spawning tank.

This salmon was pretty beat up.  All of the white portions are parts that are starting to decompose on the salmon.

Greg, our amazing volunteer, showed us the life cycle of a salmon.

You know it's been a good field trip with Lily B. and Lily P. are fast asleep on the bus ride home!