THE MIGHTY MIDWEST

We used the app Movie Trailer to "wrap up" our study of the Midwest Region of our country. We took a tour of the region visiting places such as Mt. Rushmore and the Gateway Arch. More than that, we learned that this region is known as "The Breadbasket of America" because it raises most of the wheat and corn we all use.  The students learned a great deal and to show all they learned, they broke into groups to create a movie trailer that summed up the main ideas they gleaned from our unit of study. Our essential questions for this project were:

1. How do you use the Movie Trailer app?
2. How do you summarize what you learned about the Midwest into a Movie Trailer?
3. What are the most important places and ideas to teach others about the Midwest?

Click on the photos below to watch the movie creations of 4K's students.

The Value of the "Place"

It's the place that matters! We have been working on decimals which are part of our base-ten number system. The students were asked to represent mixed numbers as decimals using the base-ten blocks. In this case, the "flat" was used to represent one whole. We used the sticks and cubes for tenths and hundredths. The number below shows 3.6 (three and six-tenths). The students also wrote the numbers in expanded form below the block representation.

Our essential questions for this unit are:

How are fractions and decimals related?

How do we write and show decimals?

How do we write decimals in expanded form?

Here is a site you can use to play some decimal review games. Just click on the words.

COMING SOON TO A THEATER NEAR YOU

We are using the Movie Trailer app on the school i-pads to show all we learned about the Midwest Region.  As our culminating project after touring the Midwest and learning all the states and capitals, students are teaming up to produce a movie trailer that will summarize some key ideas they learned. Our Essential Question for this unit is: How can we use technology to teach others what we have learned about the Midwest?  Keep your eye on this blog to view our creations. Here we are hard at work making movies.

Along with learning more deeply about our country, we are incorporating technology standards in the project. Students use digital media and environments to communicate and work collaboratively, including at a distance, to support individual learning and contribute to the learning of others. a. Interact, collaborate, and publish with peers, experts, or others employing a variety of digital environments and media b. Communicate information and ideas effectively to multiple audiences using a variety of media and formats c. Develop cultural understanding and global awareness by engaging with learners of other cultures d. Contribute to project teams to produce original works or solve problems

Nothing But Nonfiction

We are diving in to the world of Nonfiction/Informational Text. We have learned that nonfiction uses text features such as boldfaced lettering, colored fonts, photos, and captions. All seen in the photo below.

In addition, we are learning that nonfiction differs from fiction writing in other ways. For example, nonfiction texts are written using certain text structures. The five different text structures are problem and solution; cause and effect; description, sequence, and compare and contrast.   Below is an organizer that summarizes each of the structures. Please go to the reading page of this blog for even more information.

Together we will practice identifying the main idea and the text structures used.

The standards we are covering:

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.2
Determine the main idea of a text and explain how it is supported by key details; summarize the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.3
Explain events, procedures, ideas, or concepts in a historical, scientific, or technical text, including what happened and why, based on specific information in the text.

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.5

Describe the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text.

Simply Amazing!

Prepare to be amazed. The students of 4K here at Proctor School used their knowledge of simple machines to tackle an engineering project. They were asked to build a machine using multiple simple machines that could move a ball from one side of the board to the other. They worked like engineers, trying various ideas out and when they did not work, they tried another idea. This project taught them to persevere and problem solve. Every student had a "CAN-DO" attitude when approaching this task. More than anything, it is our hope that they hold on to that lesson.

Remember Thomas Edison said,

"I have not failed. I have found

10,000 ways that won't work."

Our essential questions for this project were:

1. How do you use simple machines to build a device to move the ball from point A to point B?

2. Do some simple machines work better than others for this task?

3. What is the engineering process?

CLICK ON THE PICTURES BELOW TO VIEW THE STUDENTS EXPLAINING THEIR PROJECTS.

Super Simple Machines

Simple Machines There are six simple machines. They are levers, pulleys, wheel and axle, inclined plane, wedge and screw. Gears are sometimes counted as the seventh type. We are learning about each of these during our science unit. The essential questions are: 1. How do simple machines help us? 2. What are the different kinds of energy? 3. What are some real life examples of simple and compound machines?  In CLIC, we are creating our own complex machines using these simple machines. Watch our progress in future blog posts.

For a great site to review simple machines visit: Click Here for EdHeads

MLK

As part of our celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s life, we worked with the other fourth grade classes to create a "Tagxedo-like" poster of MLK. In our class, we watched the famous "I Have A Dream" speech, listened to the book Martin's Big Words and buddy-read a mini-boigraphy about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  We learned a great deal about how MLK changed the laws of segregation in the southern part of the United States through peaceful means. After all this, we reflected on words and phrases that summed up what we felt about MLK. Then, we wrote our ideas on the "puzzle pieces" and hung them on the poster.   

CLICK HERE TO VIEW MLK'S FAMOUS VIDEO

I HAVE A DREAM VIDEO