Tuesday and Wednesday

So I just realized that I forgot to blog yesterday-oops! Anyway, here's what we have been up to!

This week, we are back to working with our Math 4 Today as our brain warm-up to begin our day. Then, in Writer's Workshop, we blogged and wrote freely. Have you checked out your kiddo's Google Apps folder? Some have a pretty extensive portfolio of writing already! After Art, we got our new StoryWorks magazine, read from The Beaded Moccasins and read independently and/or blogged. We also worked with personification--giving human characteristics to inanimate objects. Students had a little trouble with this so we worked together to understand. In Math Workshop, we learned to compose mixed numbers from improper fractions as well as improper fractions as mixed numbers. Finally, our day concluded with a video by Bill Nye about inventions.

We continued our free writing and blogging in Writer's Workshop. We will be taking our district writing assessment tomorrow and some students used this free writing time to gather materials or research in preparation of this. In Reader's Workshop, we read the poem from our new StoryWorks, "Words Free As Confetti" and studied the describing and colorful words the author used to describe the power of words. The poem also used personification so they now have a better understanding of this figurative language concept. We went outside for recess today and I was surprised when the class groaned about it. Too cold I guess! After recess, we went to the Media Center for a presentation from someone from the Hopewell National Park about the Hopewell Indians. We saw lots of artifacts and materials from the time these Native Americans were in Ohio. (I posted some pics on Twitter @ADE4thGrade) When we returned to the room, we worked more with adding mixed numbers and I introduced them to subtracting mixed numbers. Finally, Mrs. Vidic, came in for Guidance.