Out Of My Mind Word Cloud

Recently one of our connections for the global read aloud tasked us with creating word clouds about Melody and the book Out of My Mind.  Take a look at the word clouds we created!

Comfy?

Take a look at this cutie making himself comfortable for writing :)  

Science! Science! Science!

We have been using what we know about scientific method to experiment with electricity! We are just beginning a longer unit on energy sources, and are starting it off with electricity and circuits.  Take a look at our first day of circuit building!

UPDATE!!: Pictures added from our experiment: Make it brighter! and the beginning of our Magnetism Exploration :)

Thank You Aunt Gail!

Recently my aunt gave our classroom a donation :) We were able to buy almost 50 books for our classroom! Thanks a bunch Aunt Gail! We really appreciate it, and are excited to dive in to all our new books :)

The GRA has begun!

We have begun reading Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper aloud as a whole class.  We are connecting with a class from Michigan and a class from Louisiana! Each day we read a chapter from the story, and our connecting classes do the same, we post to edmodo, tweet, and next week we will skype about what we have read, feelings we have, and deeper thinking we have developed about the story.  The connections, and insights we have made have been amazing!  Not only are we replying to posts written by each teacher about the book, but we are creating and replying to posts written by 4th graders!  We are learning so much about communicating over a blog, typing and editing posts, and creating posts that others will reply to.  Take a look at a few of the posts we have already made!

Make sure to ask your 4th grader about the GRA, what we have learned about the character, and what lessons we've learned about life!

2013 Fall Field Trip Fun!

Battle of the Books: Parent Letter and Book List

The book lis for the 2013-2014 Battle of the Books has been chosen!! Please take a look at the parent letter as well as the list of Titles!  I will be working to acquire as many of the Battle titles this year for our classroom library.  You can also find these titles at local libraries and if one or more are of particular interest to you, you could pick them up at your local book store.

We will be reading some of the Battle Books this year as read alouds with the whole class.  4th Graders may also choose to read any title as their independent reading book.  Many 4th graders last year found reading the harder titles at home with a parent or family members a successful way to get through some of the more challenging Titles.

We will keep a tally of how many battle books students read on our Data wall to keep us motivated throughout the year!

 Let the Battle Begin!