Math Rocks!

Today, Mr. Greninger taught "factor trees". The students watched a video with a catchy song to get the idea. Check out "Factor Down the Tree".

Pretzels

This what we started with today:

Students were asked to practice writing their spelling words using pretzels. I LOVE these learning opportunities!! It in fascinating to watch students think, to deconstruct the pretzel, and build words. Each individual has his or her own process.

"awful"

the start of "daughter"

an opportunity to reteach before the test

Fun Spelling Week 3 words with pretzels.

the Misers

The first two weeks of school, our focus skill (reading strategy) was on Character Traits and Motivations. Students finished our learning by "falling into" their own character traits.

Starting this week, we are studying and practicing Comparing and Contrasting. We kicked off our unit today. We read about the strategy in our text book on pages 80 and 81. Then we watched a video clip of the Misers.

Together, we filled our a Venn Diagram, going over the Venn Diagram "rules" or expectations ...
* you need a title for each part (today was: "Snow Miser", "Both", "Heat Miser")
* you need to fill in at least 3 examples for each part
* avoid using the word "not"; what ARE they?
* you should write more than one word, write in phrases

We will be doing a LOT of comparing and contrasting in fourth grade! Let the learning begin!!

Opportunities

"Mistakes are proof that you are trying" is one the phrases we use and believe in fourth grade. So what happens, when a student turns in an assignment and needs help?

When Ms. Leom has time, she pulls the student individually to reteach and work with him or her. Often Ms. Leom doesn't have class time to assess student learning, so she uses "flags" made of sticky notes, to communicate to students areas they need to rework. This is what misspellings, missing capital letters, missing punctuation marks, or incomplete work messages look like. Ms. Leom pulls the sticky note (and tries to reuse it if possible) when students have made the corrections. If students turn it in for a second time and still do not show progress, she will invite the student in for Recess for a quick reteach.

Not all students pay attention to these brightly colored flags ...

And before you ask your student, and they tell you, "Ms. Leom won't let me bring (insert name of book here) home ...", Please know that your student may bring home Practice Books, Text Books, Dictionaries, Thesauruses, Cursive Books ... nearly whatever a student needs to be successful.

We are working to make STUDENTS responsible for their learning.

Just another way "we" are working to communicate clearly between home, school, and students!

Apple Day

On Tuesday September 25th, Ms. Leom's classes celebrated "Apple Day". We started both Communications classes by welcoming a special guest to our classroom.

Johnny Appleseed (aka "Mr. Meyer)

reads to Ms. Leom's, Ms. Arens, & Ms. Prose's classes

Then Ms. Leom invited her homeroom students to help core apples. The original intention was to to have every student help. The bummer, we ran out of time!

 We had to go to Math, followed by Flex Reading and Flex Math. If we didn't start cooking our apples, our applesauce would be cold, the next day... so we went to class. We worked hard. We worked on catching up on a few details, we showed our Social Studies learning, we enjoyed Recess, Lunch, then wha-la! It was time ...

ready to be tasted

We call this "Apple Day". A LOT of learning, a little bit of fun, and some autumn sweetness added to the mix.