I truly feel blessed to be apart of such a thoughtful classroom! Everyone certainly enjoyed the hot chocolate so a big thank you to those families that brought in the necessary supplies/ingredients! :) May you have a fun and relaxing holiday break! I look forward to kicking off the New Year with such a great group of kids!
We made it through the short week and are officially on winter break! A fun and busy day completing various holiday-themed projects including a photo frame for our buddies, a short narrative about Rudolph and how he got his colored nose, math/language arts review holiday-style and even hot cocoa to celebrate our poetry writing.
I truly feel blessed to be apart of such a thoughtful classroom! Everyone certainly enjoyed the hot chocolate so a big thank you to those families that brought in the necessary supplies/ingredients! :) May you have a fun and relaxing holiday break! I look forward to kicking off the New Year with such a great group of kids!
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We made it successfully through the week! WOW! What a crazy fast week, and I think we are all ready for the winter break!
Today we practiced using the articles a and an as well as identifying various homophones. We reviewed the IVF format whole group discussing whether or not certain summaries were concise or provided too many details. We seem to be getting the hang of it, but at times can be a bit wordy! Math brought a review of metric units of weight including gram and kilogram as well as units of time. Look for a practice sheet to be completed at home and to be returned on Monday. We wrapped up the day working on our inquiry project with continued research on the NE states. A big shout out for the states and capitals test! I was very impressed at the number of students who passed with flying colors.....next on the agenda - the SE. Code - Only two more school days! (But who's counting?!?!) Have a great weekend! The week is coming to a close.....where do the days go? We are trying to wrap-up many different things before the winter break. Today we took our Social Studies test covering chapter 4 with our NE states and capitals tomorrow. This will prepare us for a fresh start in the new year with Chapter 6, The Effects of Geography on Life in the Southeast. The Geography Bee quiz was given today with results given to Mr. Casey. More details will be given out to those students that are chosen based on their test score to compete further in this competition. It certainly tested their geography knowledge!
Students continued to practice summarizing using the IVF model. We practiced writing concise summaries without details. The next step will be to use these sentence summaries as our topic sentence in writing a more detailed summary of what we read. Prefixes and suffixes were discussed along with our reading as we practiced determining the meaning of various ones. Tomorrow we will hope to finish our free verse final drafts as well as bring our measurement unit to somewhat of a close before one last fun project next week where we get to put our measuring knowledge to the test! :) A big thank you to those families bringing in items for our hot chocolate celebration next Tuesday! It is sure to be lots of fun and of course, greatly appreciated! My Billings Public Schools e-mail is now up and running. Please feel free to contact me with questions and/or concerns if they arise. [email protected] We had a lot of fun watching the first, second and third graders practice their holiday program this morning! It definitely put everyone in the holiday spirit just a little bit more! We continued to practice the IVF model to help us summarize, and students will be responsible to practice using this at home while reading each night this week. Our free verse poetry continues as we practiced writing additional winter poems. Some students even started the editing process today, and we hope everyone will be ready for their final drafts by Friday. The science quiz and the MT rivers/mountains retake are both behind us. Tomorrow will bring our Chapter 4 social studies test and on Friday the NE states and capitals.
Have a great night! CODE: SS test tomorrow! Tuesdays are always extra busy days! In reading we started a new story, Henry and the Kite Dragon. With this story we will be summarizing to monitor our comprehension as well as to practice retelling what we read. The IVF model will be integrated and used to help us make summarizations.
I: Identify the selection being read V: Verb - tells, explains, discusses F: Finish the thought For example, The Nuclear Project by Kimberly Felter tells about how Mrs. Ryes' class visits a museum to learn about nuclear power. Students will be expected to practice using the IVF model in their homework on Wednesday and Thursday night this week. We have started our poetry unit. Students are busy writing winter themed free verse poems. Our goal is to share these next Tuesday at our winter celebration while enjoying hot cocoa! Please help your 4th grader remember to study for the following tests/quizzes this week: Wednesday: Matter quiz and MT Rivers and Mountains retake Thursday: Chapter 4 social studies test Friday: NE states and capitals quiz and spelling test unit 16. We are also working very hard to get caught up with missing assignments. Our goal is to head into winter break without any! :) CODE: STUDY FOR MATTER QUIZ I would like to introduce the newest member of the Gray family. Devin Robert Gray was born at 2:45 AM on December 12th. He was born at 157 ounces... how many pounds? He measured at 21inches and 15in circumference for his head. Brooke guessed the correct due date. Mom, baby , and dad are doing well!
As you know, Mrs. Gray is officially on maternity leave and hopes to welcome Baby Gray sometime tonight or tomorrow. I am excited to be spending the next 8-9 weeks as your fourth grader's teacher. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns. As soon as I receive my Billings Public Schools e-mail I will provide that information with you. I have thoroughly enjoyed the last two days with your kiddos, and believe me, they have even taught me a few things! For now, if you need to contact me, please just call the office and ask for Heather McKenzie. I look forward to getting to know everyone more!
We had a great start to our day! Mr. Bahm, Tristan's dad, provided us with a wonderful presentation on coal and his experiences from working at a coal factory. He had wonderful stories, information, photos and even videos to share. It was a great tie in with our previous science lessons. We can't thank him enough for taking the tine to visit our class! I wanted to let you all know that I will not be returning to school until my maternity leave is over in March. We will hopefully be meeting our little one any time this week. I will ,of course, post pictures and an update when baby Gray is born. All students will be in good hands with Mrs. McKenzie. I wish everyone a Happy Holiday season. May you spend time making wonderful memories and being in the presence of your family.
What a great Tuesday! The students started out the day continuing to learn about the Atlantic States. We are focusing on making generalizations and use text clues to help visualize what we are reading. Students make generalizations when they look at a set of facts, determine what is alike with the facts, and make a general statement about all of the facts. Students use visualization to help them experience what they are reading in order to create a deeper understanding of the text. Both of these reading strategies have helped us gain a deeper understanding of the Atlantic States.
Students used their schema we have created the last couple days to change units within the customary system. We will continue to use this skill tomorrow in order to master how to change units within our system. As students pointed out, we use this skill when we cook, measure, and in many other life experiences. Physical and chemical changes were the focal point with our science lesson today. I used a StudyJams video on Physical and Chemical changes in class to introduce the difference between these two types of changes. The students then experience two different experiments showing changes. The assignment notebook code for tonight is for the students to explain how they saw a chemical change occur. The students should mention how the baking soda and vinegar or the yeast, sugar, and water went through a chemical change. We saw this from seeing the gas blowing up the balloon. I will be out tomorrow for a doctor's appointment. I anticipate being in class Thursday and Friday with Friday being my last day in class until March. I want to thank all of you for your kind words of support. I will make sure to post when baby Gray is born, of course with pictures. I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season! |
Mrs. GrayI am a fourth grade teacher going on my seventh year of teaching. I have truly loved every year that I have taught and I look forward to sharing classroom activities we take part in during this upcoming school year! Archives
May 2015
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