News
and
Notes
From
Fourth Grade
Story
Structures
As
we concluded our work on narratives and text structure this week, the
fourth graders worked on creating their own story “structures.”
After identifying and finding details to describe the characters,
setting, plot (conflict and resolution), and author's message of our
individualized daily reading books, we decided to turn this
information into a creative project. Since the topic was story
“structures”, we created a book project that looks like a little
house. Each of the walls shows information about one piece of the
structure of the narrative. By the end of the week we were putting
together the finishing touches on our “story town.” What fun it
is to be able to share a deep understanding of our reading in this
creative way! Needless to say, our fourth grade readers were excited
and proud to share their reading adventures with each other!
MATHDAY
Monday
We
all have things we'd rather not do. Maybe it's the laundry, or the
dishes, or cleaning the garage. Well, in fourth grade recently we've
run into a bit of a problem... our class seems to be infected with
some “math-itis.” What's more, it seems to be spreading. In an
attempt to cut to the core of our problem, we planned a full day of
fun, hands-on, interactive, and cooperative math learning. Included
in our MATHDAY Monday were things like time-travel math, building
patterns, math superheroes, math games with cards and dice, and even
a few very corny math jokes. The day began with a fair amount of
grumbling and complaining, but by the end of the day the fourth
graders were asking when the next MATHDAY Monday was scheduled. The
truth of the matter is that math is indeed a very challenging
discipline. What we tried to remember this week was that math is
also interesting, diverse, creative, thought-provoking, and extremely
important to all aspects of daily life. Now if we could only find
some way to make our most disliked chores more appealing...
Rube
Goldberg
To
conclude our study of physical science and simple machines, we met a
new “great mind” this week: Rube Goldberg. We discovered that
this scientists/cartoonist/inventor was a very creative thinker. The
big idea behind a Rube Goldberg machine is to find the most
complicated way to solve a simple problem. We watched videos of
different groups (including past Simonds' students) creating their
own Rube Goldberg machines. What fun it was to see a new application
of the science that we've been exploring!
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