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September Newsletter Read all about it!!
Phew, what a whirlwind these past few weeks have been starting off our school year! Our classroom newsletter is written entirely by our fourth grade students. Students choose a topic, brainstorm and sequence ideas, write their rough draft, conference with a teacher, edit and revise their draft. They then publish their work by creating their very OWN slide which they can add their own personal flair to! Please be sure to view the entire slideshow with your student, as it will be assigned for homework the night it is sent. Students have been working VERY diligently to produce an organized, detail-oriented writing piece. It will be amazing to see the progression of their writing as the school year continues. Please note, the first slide will be devoted to important information and upcoming dates from me. As always, please offer any feed back--we would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. Enjoy! Mrs. Farrell
Important Dates • 10/16 Chaperone Notice for Sturbridge • 10/17 Special Visitor Day • 10/25 (10:15) Picture Day • 10/29 (1:50) Book Fair in the Vogel—Parents are welcome to join us. • 10/30 Mystery Project due • 10/30 (1:45 in back gym) Pumpkin Parade • 10/31 (1:15-2:15ish) Halloween Centers/Party! • 11/1 Sturbridge Village Field Trip
Word of the Day!By: Rachael Anderson First thing in the morning, in Mrs. Farrell’s class we have Word of the Day. We call it W.O.D for short. Mrs. Farrell explains what the words definition or meaning is during our morning meeting. She explains how you can use the word in a sentence, spelling, or a paragraph. We will talk and share are ideas to each other about what we think the word is. I did not know the meaning of treacherous, conceal, and barrier, until Mrs. Farrell explained it to me. We have a new word every morning on the board. We have to answer questions about what the word means and when to use the word in the past, present, or future tense. We all show a thumbs up or in the middle, when Mrs. Farrell says an example sentence of what the word means or the opposite. Word of the Day helps your vocabulary because it helps you learn new words and how to use them in a sentence. I like Word of the Day because, I get to learn new words and put them in my writing and it helps me when I’m doing a spelling test. You will have a test every single Friday for Word of the Day. Good Luck! You are going to be loving Word of the Day! It is going to be a fun and exciting year for you!
The Amazing Winn Dixie By Josh Canning We have been reading Winn Dixie this year. It’s an awesome book, Mrs. Farrell reads it and sometimes students read it. When we are finished reading Winn Dixie we are going to watch the movie to compare and contrast both versions. First Opal moves to a new town where she finds Winn Dixie at the Winn Dixie grocery store. She found him and now she is going to keep him. Throughout the book Opal has met Miss Franny, Gloria Dump , the Dewberry brothers and Otis. She is meeting a lot of friends all because of Winn Dixie!! She learns 10 things about her mom and finds out that Winn Dixie has pathological fear of thunderstorms too! Gloria Dump host a party for all the friend ships they had . Opal and Winn Dixie are going to have a good life together.
RoundingBy : Ryan Dowden Would you like to be great at rounding ,well I will tell you some tips and tricks on rounding so here I go!! First you will be given a specific place value , to round to then here is a little trick, it is when you look at the second digit right of place value . You can round to Tens, Hundreds , thousands even millions!!! If its lower than 4 , round down if higher round up. Some times you can visualize a number line in your head. If some one gives you a number and don’t tell you to round to round to the heights place value. Rounding is fun to learn when you get the hang of it .
Learn about North America!!By Colin Gillis North America is the 3rd largest continent on Earth. There are 24 countries in North America, including the United States of America, Canada, Mexico, Greenland, Cuba, and Puerto Rico. About 502 million people live in North America. Most people speak English, Spanish, or French. North America was named after the explorer AmericoVespucci. Mexico City, Mexico is the largest city in North America. North America is the only continent that has every kind of climate (desert, rainforest, forest, mountains, tundra, and grassland). Mount McKinley, Alaska is the tallest point on the continent, 20,237 feet above sea level. Death Valley, California, is the lowest point on the continent, 282 feet below Sea Level. Now you know some very interesting facts about the continent that we live on…..North America!
Our Science NotebooksBy: Lauren Meyer Do you like science? Well, maybe you should keep a science notebook like we do! Let me tell you all about our notebooks / journals. We use these while learning science, and write every thing we learned or know about the topic we are discussing about. For example, we were chatting about matter and so, we created a word splat in our notebooks and wrote everything we knew about matter. Making the word splat was fulfilling and made us feel really educated. We also use our notebooks for investigations. So, while we were trying out a vanilla investigation, we observed what was happening and we wrote it down. Another activity we did in our notebooks was to write some of our important science vocab. Some of the vocab we wrote inside were the words matter, states of matter, and properties of matter. We will use these notebooks as study guides later in the year. If you make a science notebook for anything related to science you can remember anything you learned, and have some fun while you are doing it. Try it!
Oceans and Continents By: Payton Foley Do you know the seven continents and five oceans? If not, I’ll tell you! First, I’ll tell you about the five oceans. The biggest ocean, the Pacific Ocean is bigger than all the other oceans AND seas combined! It stretches from the west coast of the United States to the east coast of China and Russia. The smallest ocean is the Arctic Ocean. It stretches from northern Canada to northern Russia. The Arctic ocean is north of everything on a map. Then there’s the Atlantic Ocean, it stretches from the east coast of the United States to the west coast of Portugal. It is the second biggest ocean. Then there’s the Indian Ocean, it stretches from eastern Africa to western Indonesia. It is the fourth biggest ocean. Finally the newest ocean, the Southern Ocean, it stretches from western Australia to eastern South America. Now let me tell you about the seven continents. There names are Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe, and Australia. The biggest continent is Asia. Asia has sixty percent of the Earth’s people. That’s about 4,000,000,000 people! The smallest continent is Australia. Did you know that Australia is the country that is a continent? The other continents are Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe. Continents are important because they are landmasses and we live on them. I hope you enjoyed this slide by Payton Foley!
MATTER!By: Jacob Brengel Do you want to learn about matter? Well you are reading the right information. Matter is everything in the world from a chair to a block its all matter. It comes in three forms ,solid , liquid and gas. solids are stuff that cant brake on there own, liquids are stuff like water and coke and other drinks, gas is the air we breath everyday of our lives! It(matter) is made of atoms. The atoms are made of protons, neutrons and electrons. Pretty cool right! No matter what type of matter it is it has its own properties. Well that’s scientific information with professor Jacob.
Math Games!By: Benjamin Hjort Do you like math games? If you do your in luck because there are some really fun math games in Mrs. Farrell’s room! At the beginning of the year we play theses math games Place value pathways and Round up! The games that we play all involve a skill for example Place value pathways is all about place value and Round up is all about rounding. So its fun in education! We play in partners by picking sticks with our names on them from a cup. The other two math games are Reject and Mystery number they’re both two player games too. They’re you have it! Those are all the fantastic math games in Mrs. Farrell’s room!
Math About Me!By: Adam Boothe Hey would you like to learn about Math About Me posters? The Math About Me is a poster where you make a drawing of you, Using numbers. First, We need to brainstorm important numbers about yourself. Then you write numbers on the paper in any box. For example, If your 10 years old you can put a 10 in the box and draw you. Trust me they look Mindblowingwhen it’s done! O yeah and you can decorate it how ever you want! You should make your own at home, School anywhere ! Then you can hang them up anywhere you want in your room, Fridge, Wall anywhere you want
How to Blow a BubbleBy: Jeffie Bourque The whole class was given a task to sequence how to blow a bubble . I am going to show you how!! First, Mrs. Farrell gave every one a piece of mouth watering gum to help us sequence the steps . Second, open the gum and throw the wrapper in the trash. Third, put the gum in your mouth and chew approximately thirty seconds . Then, flatten the gum with your tongue. Finally , put the gum on your tongue and hold it with your teeth and the blow. These are the correct steps however when we had Mrs. Farrell model how to blow a bubble and we weren’t very clear because we told her to put the gum in her ,but we forgot to tell her to open the gum wrapper so she put the gum and the wrapper in her mouth!! POP!!! That’s the noise a bubble makes when it pops!
HopesandDreamsBy: Isabella Distefano Do you want to know about this cool activity called hopes and dreams? Well, I’ll tell you all about this activity! Hopes and dreams is when you draw what you want to get better at this year in fourth grade. For example, you could draw math signs if you want to learn more about math or you could draw a book if you want to read a lot better in school. You can make your drawing colorful if you want too. For my hopes and dreams I drew an A+ paper that I got on a desk I drew. You could do hopes and dreams any time you’d like to or in your free time and draw what you have in mind to draw, but first you must do something hard or challenging for your goal! I hope you do hopes and dreams one day!
DearBy: Alexa Cossette Do you want to learn about Dear in Mrs. Farrell's class? Well Dear stands for drop everything and Read. When were reading Mrs. .Farrell shuts off a row off lights and she says its for us to cool down and relax after recess so that kids can Enjoy what there reading . After assignments are done we get to read for a pleasure . Special chairs are important to dear because you get to sit and relax. The special chairs are the flower chair, rocking chair, stool, bean bags, and the Husband . Kids are able to chose a chapter book of there choice to enjoy. So get your nose in a book and start reading!
Buddiesby Ally Peterson Buddies with Mrs. Coleman class is so much fun would like to hear about it? Well every Friday afternoon we have buddies with the students In Mrs. Coleman's class. Are deferent kinds of things that we do. Would you like to know some of them? The first week we got to gather we played round up .It is a dice game!!!!!! That teaches us how to round numbers . The next time we had a extra recess we went on the swing ,we played tag and got to know each other even more. Last week Mrs. Coleman's class came to our class room we watch the magic school bus it was about matter !! It has ben fun working with our new buddies !!!! I wonder what activated we will do next Friday I am so excited I can not wait!!!!!!!
Brainquest!!!!! By, Camden Constatine Brainquest at the end of the day is awesome! Brainquest is a game when there is teams and you have to answer questions that have to do with anything. We play boys VS girls but you can play it any way you want. So far the boys are winning, but not by a lot the score is 59 to 54. I think some of the questions are hard for example, who was the first person alive? But some are simple like, what’s the value of the five in 2,527. To me I think it could win! Not only are you playing but you are learning at the same time you might even learn some answers to problems you might have no have known. Brainquest is really fun you should try it with your friends and family.
Place ValueBy: Hannah Crocker We have learned many things in place value so far. I will tell you what we have learned. First, we have learned that when you use place value you are naming the place of a digit. For example, in the number 2,401,245 the 1 is in the thousands place. The value of a digit is different than place value because it is how much a digit is worth. Also, there is periods in place value too! The three main periods we worked with were ones, thousands and millions. We also learned that written form, expanded form, and standard form were in place value too! When you use written form you are writing the number in words. For example one million four hundred thousand two hundred thirty five. For expanded form you are writing the place of a digit. For example, 425 would be 400+20+5. Finally for standard form would just do 425. We also learned that greater and less than symbols are in place value too. They tell you if something is greater or less than the numbers you are using. For example, 45< 39. Some other concepts we learned are subtraction, multiplication, addition, and division. Also estimation and rounding. As you can see place value is really important in our classroom because we are all mathematicians!
Penpalsby Diego Trapani Something really fun is coming up it is called, Penpals, it is at school. Our penpals live in needham they also are in 3rd grade at a different school. It is especially fun when you write to them and when they write to you. Penpals tell you what is happening at school in needham. They tell you what they are doing in math. We are finishing up our letters at school. You should get a penpal of your own do it with a friend, sister, even your cousin, or maybe someone you don’t even know
Math Games!By Jack Summers! Do you want to learn about our classes math games?! We have a lot of fun math games, such as, round-up, or place value path. Oh and my personal favorite one is reject, re, je, ct, re,je,ct, rejection!!! So we have math centers once every week, and we have four or five centers. One of them is the game center, where we play games like place value path, or round-up. And my personal favorite, reject. Don’t you love math games?!
Map Skillsby Aidan Gillis Do you want to learn cool map skills? We did! Do you know there are eight directions on a compass and we learned how to read a compass ? We learned how to read longitude and latitude lines . Latitude lines are imaginary lines that go east and west .Longitude go north and south. On a map there will always be a map key .A map key tells the symbols of capitals, landforms, and other important items so you understands what your looking at. On an insert map it shows Canada and Alaska and it can show other states and continents that wouldn't fit on the map other wise. Also an insert may be a small section of the map in more detail. A hemisphere separates a globe into sections. There is a northern southern eastern, and western hemisphere. Learning map skills has been to totally terrific!
KP BandBy: Colton When you advance into 4th grade you can choose to play an instrument in the amazing KP band. In the beginning of the year the high school comes to Roderick and plays a demonstration. During the assembly, we met Mrs. Salazar, the band teacher. The band performed all of the band instruments like saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, French horn and trombone. The high school played popular songs that are probably being played on the radio right as we speak. Here are some of the songs that they played: Sponge Bob, Dora, Crazy Train, The Final Countdown and Blurred Lines. When you advance into 4th grade, go and join the amazing KP Band!!!!!!!!!
Fabulous FluencyBy: Zach Haigh Ms. Magers comes to the class near the end of the day and we do something called Fabulous Fluency. What’s Fabulous Fluency you might be asking, well let me tell you all about it! When we do Fabulous Fluency we don’t learn to read, we read to learn. We not only become good readers, we become fluent readers. First, we get assigned partners and receive our folders. Then, you and your partner find a place in the room and sit E.E.K.K. elbow to elbow knee to knee. After that, we get 60 secs. to read our passage. If you finish your passage 2 times in a row you get a newer, harder one. Finally, we graph all the words we read to record our reading progress. Fabulous Fluency truly is fabulous!
10 Things About Your Class Mate!By: Lindsey Young Do you want to learn 10 things about your classmate? This is how you do it! You interview your friend and you learn a lot about your classmate! Then you ask them and write them down. 2 question you could ask is how many pets do you have? And what's your favorite candy? Next you have a teacher check you work. You get the final copy and then write everything down! Now you color and draw your friend. And you can put a lot of detail into it! After that it was fun learning all about my friend Rachael. She was very interesting to learn about! Finally you hang it up. Hope you have fun interviewing the 10 things about your classmate!