AC Fourth Grade

06/06/2015

In case you missed it, here is the 4th grade rendition of Shake it Off!

05/26/2015

Hello wonderful parents!

Strawberry breakfast Friday was a great way to kick off a long weekend. I hope you enjoyed your time off and your kids are ready for the final push of school! We are still buzzing busy around the classroom! Most of our days are filled with math, reading tests, reading/writing groups, and many special activities!

Starting last week, your kids have been involved in a math collaboration between myself, Mr. Costanzo, and Mr. Sullivan. They are using music to explore fractions in math, being challenged by Mr. Sullivan through different math word problem challenges, and enjoying some card game math with me to continue our practice with whole number operations before our summer mind sets in!

Reading collaboration with 3rd grade will conclude at the end of this week. Your kids are in their final groups and you can see whats going on by checking on Mrs. Ellmaker's blog found here!

Reading tests began at the end of last week, I am already impressed with the growth many of your kids have made throughout this school year. Once I've completed tests, I will be sure to fill you in on how you can continue reading development throughout the summer to avoid the slide backwards in levels most schools see!

Last week we were able to work with upper school for a community service project. We split up into 3 groups exploring 7 different playgrounds in the Rochester area, collecting information to help our partner kidsoutandabout.com, and cleaned up as much as we could! Your kids did a wonderful job.

We've also been able to watch a demonstration by an alumni of an apple launcher right here on campus! It was very impressive and the kids had a blast, check out the pictures on Facebook!

Enjoy this 4 day week, 9 more school days to go!

05/15/2015

Cloth Book Project

What an exciting week we had!

The publishing party with kidsoutandabout went so well. Thank you all for your support and kind words. Debra Ross, the publisher, had times screwed up, so she ended up showing up a little later with Sky Zone. Sky Zone brought enough passes for every student in our Lower School! Hopefully we will be able to get those out on Monday. We are also working on doing a field trip there the last week of school. Here is the link to the results from the 4th grades hard work:
http://rochester.kidsoutandabout.com/content/allendale-columbia-kids-vote-top-20-places-take-kids-greater-rochester

We started off this week with the Cloth Book project. Your kids worked with a partner to develop a book for children in Nicaragua. This took up majority of our mornings on Monday and Tuesday. The books came out beautifully!

We had our last Citizenship Group with Mrs. RC yesterday. Your kids talked a lot more about grit and what it means to have grit and also filled out surveys. They talked more about having self-esteem and how to maintain it when things get hard in school and in their lives.

We collaborated with 3rd grade this week for reading/writing based projects. Here is a link to Mrs. Ellmaker's blog where you can see more about what students did. Next week they will switch to a new teacher and new experience!
https://mrsellmaker.wordpress.com/

Next week we begin our collaboration with Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Costanzo for math. For 3 weeks, we will be doing an exciting new activity or project that is based in math. I'm very excited to collaborate with Mr.Costanzo. He is going to bring math and music together as a hands-on experience with fractions and rhythm for kids!

Next Wednesday, the 4th graders will be teaming up with Upper School kids for various community service projects. They will be traveling with myself, Mrs. Bjorklund or Mrs. Irvine from STEM class to different parts of the city. The group from STEM that did the Ontario Lake project will be going with Mrs. Bjorklund to Corbett's Glen in Penfield to pick up trash, hike, and have lunch. Mrs. Irvine will be taking the swamp group to Thousand Acre swamp to pick up garbage, hike, and have lunch. The other two groups will travel with me to various parks in the area to take measurements and pictures (and clean up) to help Debra Ross with some more information for her site. We will play, eat, and work!

05/09/2015

Good afternoon!

I will not complain that it is too hot. I will not! However, now that the weather is getting nicer it is getting much warmer in our classroom. Also, PE is mostly outdoors and there is not enough time between classes for each student to get the amount of water they probably want after running around. Because of this, it would be great to have water bottles around again for students to stay hydrated around Allendale.

This week we counted up our votes for the kid version of "Top 20 Places to Take Kids in Rochester". I think my favorite part about this project was that your children led it in the direction of making sure that the smaller businesses were accounted for. As a result of their efforts to get to know these businesses, write persuasive essays, and create a persuasive piece to share with the lower school, ALL 6 places they chose to highlight came in our top 20. 5 of them made the top 10! For places like Wild Wings, RocVentures, and ArtsRoc - this is amazing news for their business. I placed a phone call to the owner of ArtsRoc this morning and she was ecstatic to hear the news and overjoyed at how much the KIDS care about what she does for them. Our top 5 (Sky Zone, SeaBreeze, Lazer Quest, ArtsRoc, and Darien Lake have all been invited to the publishing party on Friday, May 15th at 12:00.

Next week your kids will collaborate with the 3rd graders and be split into 3 different groups. Each week they will be working an an aspect of reading and/or writing with Mrs. Ellmaker (Readers Theatre), Mrs. Robbins (Chris Van Allsburg author study), and myself (Haiku project). We are very excited to collaborate!

05/01/2015

Watching the Minecraft Play written and put on by AC students!

First off, I would like to congratulate the 4th graders on a job well done this week. We have had A LOT to complete and they have worked like rock stars to get it all done!

In math we are learning about symmetry. Many students struggled with the names of many polygons and then rushed through a lot of their work when trying to figure out how many lines of symmetry there were in different polygons. The lesson they learned here was that it's a LOT faster to do your work slowly and correctly the first time, so you don't have to do it again :)

We are SO CLOSE to finishing our books in reading workshop. Next week we will hold our final book club (I accidentally mixed up the dates for when we would start our classes with the 3rd graders)!

We have finished our essays for persuasive writing on our "hidden gems" in Rochester. This week we presented our information to the lower school during lunch in all different formats such as skits, songs, and google slides. 4th graders finished the voting boxes and asked students to vote on their favorite places in Rochester today - we are eager to find out the winners! Debra Ross and I have met and would like to put together a publishing party on May 15th (time TBA - after lunch for sure) for the community. You are all invited as well as our Top 6 winners. This will be the day the findings go live on the website kidsoutandabout.com!!!

Entrepreneur Day went so well! Today we calculated our profits (or lack there of)! Many students realized that after the cost of materials, they had nothing left! We sent home the cash for the cost of materials with each student today to pay you back for what you paid to start this business. You are welcome to donate that cost toward our fundraiser for Strong Memorial Hospital. If you choose to do that, just send the bag back in with your child on Monday. The physical action they had to take to separate their cost was such a good lesson for many. They are starting to realize that to be more successful they need to think of so much more than what they want to make.

Our Friday Exit Journals were written very differently today. I went easy on much of the writing because it was our first day writing how what we want to be when we grow up connects to what we are learning in school. It's always fun to see what their dreams and aspirations are for the future.

Reminders:
Kite Day is next Friday, May 8th from 1:30 - 2:30. Students are encouraged to bring a kite (or two) :) to fly during that time. You are welcome to come participate as well. Let's hope for great weather!
The publishing party for 4th graders "Top 20 Places to Take Kids in Rochester" is May 15th. Time TBA.
Thursday May 14th at 7pm is the LS Spring Concert.

Have a wonderful weekend! Please check out
Kasie

04/30/2015

Setting up!

04/24/2015

-Wendall Berry

Wow! What a week! Many of your students finished their persuasive essays this week and they have done a wonderful job. Thank you for your support through this process. They are going to use these essays to create a presentation for the lower school kids in order to remind them of great "hidden gems" in Rochester before they vote on their Top 20!

We spent a lot of time this week getting prepared for the Top 20. We began getting voting boxes ready, cut and sorted ballets for each student, and worked hard to begin our presentations.

Math this week was filled with division review for many kiddos. We noticed we needed to take a break from geometry and nail down some long-division. Many of the students are feeling much better about this now.

We continue to read our books for book club. Hopefully we can finish them up next week and hold one more discussion about our books. After next week we will be teaming up with the 3rd grade teachers for the students to take 3 different classes (one per week). More about that next Friday!

Remember that next Thursday is Entrapaneur Day from 1:00 - 2:30. Many of the kids have worked very hard and are excited for this day, I can't wait to see what they came up with! We voted between all 3 grades today and all profits from our sales will be donated to the Golisano Children's Hospital at Strong.

Our students had a wonderful opportunity to hear and give feedback to a middle school Minecraft Play. This Play will be presented along with an exhibit from our own AC students at The Strong Museum of Play this weekend! The performance will ONLY BE ON SATURDAY. I hope you can make it, here is the information:
Discover the Digital Sandbox
Saturday, April 25
Saturday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.; Sunday, 1 to 4 p.m.
Imagine, design and construct during a weekend inspired by online virtual communities such as Minecraft and Terraria, popular with school-age children. Come in costume, make a craft, and more. On Saturday only, attend a theatrical performance of Quest for the Golden Apple: an Unofficial Minecraft Adventure by Allendale Columbia School students at 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. This original play is themed after the unofficial Minecraft book The Quest for the Diamond Sword. Included with general museum admission fees.

http://www.museumofplay.org/calendar #1708

Have a wonderful weekend!

03/21/2015

We were exposed and enjoyed a lot of music this week! On Wednesday, 3 students from the Eastman School of Music came to perform for us. They played beautifully and did a great job having the kids picture a character and what that character was like or what he was doing throughout the piece they played for us. The kids had such exciting and wonderful thoughts about "sleepy Sam" - they were truly engaged!

Also, today we were able to enjoy Shrek, performed by the Middle School. They did an amazing job, we LOVED the show!

In addition, Mrs. RC came to talk to us this week about GRIT. She challenged us to think about what it is and how we can use it as a tool to help us throughout our lives. We then created our own GRIT posters with pictures and words of things that help us remember to persevere and stay positive, even when things are hard.

We are moving along in our book club books. Students are really enjoying this round of book club and are having some wonderful discussions about what they are reading.

In writing this week, we enhanced our understanding of persuasive writing by adding arguments about why students should consider the hidden gems we chose to interview. They had to place their arguments in to categories of fact and opinion. We spent a LONG time as a class debating over each fact that a student presented to make sure they got it right!

In math this week we worked hard on multi-step word problems. Students still struggle at times deciding what information is necessary to the problem and what information is not.

Hopefully, the weather begins to match the season soon! Have a wonderful weekend.

03/13/2015

Learning about Entrepreneur Day.

Week of March 9th

Happy Friday everyone! This week the kids were introduced to Entrepreneur Day. Many of them are excited and motivated to start their business'! This week they were introduced to this special day with 3 classes. Randy Northrup and I teamed up to talk to students about their table set up as well as things to think about when naming their business. Stephanie D.P. taught kids about the math behind the busness as well as what making a profit really means. And Shari Ellmaker taught kids some of the extensive vocabulary that is needed to understand entrepreneurship. Please take some time this weekend to go over the booklet that was sent home and sign and return next week.

In reading this week, we moved on in our books. Due to many students catching a nasty bug, we didn't read a ton, but we did take some time to act out our books and show each other what we were reading - it was a lot of fun!

In math we worked a lot more on perfecting those multiplication skills with multiplying double digit numbers by single digit and double by double. We also worked hard to solve some word problems,

Writing this week was all about our small business' in Rochester. Students began the process for writing persuasively, by brainstorming some things that make the business they are interviewing so unique and fun for kids.

03/13/2015

Acting out our books for the class.

Week of March 9th

Happy Friday everyone! This week the kids were introduced to Entrepreneur Day. Many of them are excited and motivated to start their business'! This week they were introduced to this special day with 3 classes. Randy Northrup and I teamed up to talk to students about their table set up as well as things to think about when naming their business. Stephanie D.P. taught kids about the math behind the busness as well as what making a profit really means. And Shari Ellmaker taught kids some of the extensive vocabulary that is needed to understand entrepreneurship. Please take some time this weekend to go over the booklet that was sent home and sign and return next week.

In reading this week, we moved on in our books. Due to many students catching a nasty bug, we didn't read a ton, but we did take some time to act out our books and show each other what we were reading - it was a lot of fun!

In math we worked a lot more on perfecting those multiplication skills with multiplying double digit numbers by single digit and double by double. We also worked hard to solve some word problems,

Writing this week was all about our small business' in Rochester. Students began the process for writing persuasively, by brainstorming some things that make the business they are interviewing so unique and fun for kids.

03/09/2015

Music class - this song was learned in just 30 minutes! Good job 4th graders and thanks for letting me come to hear you and play with you.

03/06/2015

Week of March 2nd


This week began with some work on ethical decision making around interrupting and practicing math facts. While working through these scenarios, students came up with a useful chart describing times that it is appropriate to interrupt and times it is not. For example, when one person speaks out, often it snowballs into others talking out leading to a chaotic mess. However, if someone was speaking inappropriately, it would be a good time to interrupt them and let them know to stop. In addition, we talked about math facts and why we should even learn them. Many students felt they were necessary as a life skill, but struggled to give examples of when they would use this skill outside of their job (if they were a cashier only). It would be beneficial to speak out loud about times you are using math in your everyday lives to show students that it is in fact necessary on a daily basis.
This week students began interviewing small businesses for their design thinking project. The two groups that went out this week did a wonderful job. Once all businesses are interviewed, we will be writing a persuasive essay describing why some of these smaller businesses should be considered when voting for the “Top 20 Places to Take Kids in Rochester”.

Students continued reading their new book club books this week. They did a wonderful job talking with one another about their books. Many students have had a blast acting out different chapters to aid in their comprehension of the stories they are reading.

The math concept of area and perimeter was challenged this week using a roll of toilet paper. Students worked with a partner to make the largest area and longest perimeter they could. It is apparent that they still struggle with this concept when presented out of a worksheet context. After we review the skill, we will try another project to enhance their learning about this.

Next week we will begin the discussion for Entrepreneur Day. Expect some information to be coming home with your kids next Monday!