Severe Weather

We are learning about Severe Weather in class. Our purpose is to learn more about the different types of weather and what we can do to be safe.

These are two of the books Ms. Leom shared in class.

Students are reading a packet called, "thunderstorms...  tornadoes... lightning ... Nature's Most Violent Storms". It is a preparedness Guide prepared by the American Red Cross. Then students are answering questions. The packet is helping us work on our skills of using headlines, pictures, captions, and diagrams to find information. The information is not always grouped together or in order, making it an important skill for us to practice.

Students are learning about flash flooding, thunderstorms, tornadoes, EAS (Emergency Alert Systems) and NOAA (National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration), heat waves, heat exhaustion, and heat stroke.

We are encouraging students to talk to their families about individual plans and what works in their home situations.

Extending String

This week, Ms. Leom's class took their Cat's Cradle String game "on the road", or down the hallway. We visited Mrs. Lepper's third grade class and shared what we know. We talked about how failure, the string collapsing, will happen. We even taught them our new made up word, "kerplunkle" when the string collapses. We shared how we set it up, and we try again. We practiced our patience and using our encouraging words to teach and support our new friends in this skill.  We had a lot of fun!

 We look forward to see how far our string can extend!

Tonic Sol Fa

Tonic Sol Fa, the a cappella singing group, known throughout the Midwest, that has performed on the Today Show, and featured in Newsweek, came to Milaca High School on Friday April 24th to perform. It was so much fun to run into students and families at this local event!!

My mom (in pink) and two of her friends joined my children and I

 Just another reason living in Milaca is a great place to live!

Reading Poetry

After four weeks of writing poetry, we took the last day to read poetry. Students had over thirty books to choose from. We took time to write down poems we especially enjoyed.

What a GREAT day to read!!

Sunshine

The sunshine and warmer weather is calling to us ...

So we look for opportunities to go outside and stretch our bodies and release our wiggles. We know that being active is helpful to our learning and growing. (In song), "Let the sun shine in!"

Wolf Pack

We are in the middle of the annual Milaca Elementary Wolf Pack Poster Contest. Every student is invited to draw their best Milaca Wolf, add the name of our elementary school, and only use the colors red, black, and white.

In Ms. Leom's class, students had nearly an hour to work on their entries. Then we waited another three days for students to finish up their work on their own time.

We had twenty entries in our classroom. Next, we invited students to do an "artists walk" to see the choices.

Next, students were given mini-sticky notes. Students wrote one number to vote. Their numbers were placed in a bucket and placed on the entries, so we could SEE the results.

 

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After our first ballots, we took the top three entries, and the whole class voted again.

Finally, we had an entry from our classroom.

Each classroom will submit one entry. Last year, the entries were posted in the staff lounge, and all of the teachers, paraprofessionals, custodial, secretarial, administrators, and more are invited to vote. I am not sure of the plan for this year.

Mr. Greninger's class just posted their entries. They will be voting soon!

Testing

Yesterday, April 22, 2015, the Minnesota Department of Education Temporarily Suspended Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments. For the exact details, you can check out this link, MCA Testing.

What this means for your fourth grader, the MCA Tests are not available for our students to take. We have readjusted our schedules, returned to learning as usual, and we will let you know when we know more.

Testing could resume as early as tomorrow (Thursday April 23 ... ?) ... we just don't know. We will be prepared for every possibility, so your child will have a productive and eventful day in fourth grade!