This Week in Fourth Grade

Busy Days Ahead!

There are so many exciting events just around the corner as we begin to wrap up not only fourth grade, but also the end of elementary school!  While we are looking forward to these events, we are still hard at work in the classroom learning new things and applying the knowledge that we have gained this year.

Please send back....
Last week your child received a permission slip for our field trip to the Hudson Public Library and Wood Park.  If your child does not have a library card, he/she also received a form to fill out so that he/she can get a card when we visit on our field trip.  Please have these forms back by this Friday, June 1st!  

As part of our Time Capsule Ceremony, each child receives a t-shirt with the signatures of all of the fourth graders.  A t-shirt form was sent home last week as well.  Please make sure you let us know your child's t-shirt size so that they will receive the correct size for our ceremony!

iMovie Research Projects

For the past couple of weeks students researched the Southwestern region of the United States.  Teams of students were assigned various topics regarding the Southwest to read about, take notes on, and write summaries of their learning.  Students then had to put their summarized learning into a script and create an iMovie presentation.  The photos below show our community watching all of the finished movies.

Memorial Day

On Friday, we celebrated Memorial Day and had a special guest visit our community to help us better understand the meaning of Memorial Day.  Technical Sergeant Richard Leger (Mrs. Leger's brother-in-law) who serves as a member of the Honor Guard in the Air Force spent the morning after the ceremony with us.  He performed a flag folding ceremony for everyone with the help of Jake A. and Izzy and taught us how to salute and follow some basic commands.  He also answered many many questions!  Below are some pictures of the ceremony and of his visit.

Thank you!

Thank you to all the families that offered to donate some of the materials that we need for our culminating writing/science activity.  The kids are very excited to be able to put on a shadow puppet play based on their knowledge of dolphins and whales.

Here are some materials that we are still in need of:  card stock, wax paper, tracing paper,  tissue paper, and Popsicle sticks.  We are also in need of empty cereal boxes. 

If you are able to donate any of these materials, please let me know.  We would need them by Friday, June 1st.  

Have a great week!  

This Week in Fourth Grade

iMovies

This week students worked on summarizing their research about the Southwest.  We practiced strategies for writing effective summaries and emphasized putting them into our own words.  Next week we will begin to turn the summaries of our research into iMovie presentations!

Time Capsule Reminder

The end of the year is fast approaching and with it will come the Time Capsule Closing Ceremony!  All students should be working on their time capsule at home at this point.  The week of the ceremony, students will bring their time capsules to school and we will add items to it here.  Please let us know if you have any questions!

Math Workshop

We will be starting a project this week called "If the World Were a Village" based on a book with the same name.  We will start the week by watching a video to go along with the book.  The concept looks at taking the whole world's population and creating a village of 100 people.  Within this population of 100 we will discover what fraction of the people would live in North America, the fraction of people in the village that would be children, the fraction of people who would not have enough food and water each day and many others.  Throughout the week we will use this book to show decimals in picture form, write decimals, as well as compare and order decimals.  Be sure to ask your child what he or she is learning throughout the week!

Just a reminder.....we have our Memorial Day Program on Friday at 9:00.  

Have a great week!

Jen and Jaime

This Week in Fourth Grade

Our Prezi's Are Ready!

Students presented their Prezi's on the Southeast this week to their classmates!  If you would like to view your child's Prezi please ask them!  They would happy and proud to share their hard work with you.  The website is prezi.com.  The username is jleger@hudson.k12.ma.us.  The password is Farley.  Your child will know where to go from there to find their own presentation.

When viewing these Prezi's, please keep in mind the amount of work that went into the finished product.  Students learned a lot of non-fiction comprehension skills, research strategies, note-taking and organizational skills as well as some new technology.  We will continue to refine these skills and strategies as we move onto researching the Southwest in preparation for the creation of iMovies!  Below are some pictures of students presenting.

Football Frenzy!  
We were feeling the excitement of math review through our Football Frenzy game again last week!  The kids were prepared for the game ahead with some eye black to get them into the football spirit!  The students continued to work together to solve a variety of math review problems.  Once a team made it to the 50 yard line, they were able to try to make a field goal.  Teams that were successful in making the field goal were able to earn LL Bucks!  

Ready for some football!!

Moving their team down field!

Field goal attempts!

Writing Workshop

We continued to research whales and dolphins this week.  By the middle of the week we had tons of facts to share about our topic. The kids were able to take what they have learned throughout the year in reading to help them create categories for their facts.  These categories will help us with the next step of beginning to write our research book.

1:1 Technology Survey
Below is a letter from the HPS 1:1 Technology Strategic Committee:

Dear Parents:

This year the district undertook a large initiative of providing a district-issued Chromebook to students in grades 4, 5, 7, and 8-10.  We are nearing the end of our first year and would like to gather information from our parents concerning their thoughts around this 1:1 Technology initiative.  Would you please take a few minutes and fill out the survey. You can answer one survey for each child who was involved in the 1:1 Technology initiative or answer the survey in aggregate for all your children.  Below is a link to the survey. 

1:1 Parent Survey

Thank you in advance for taking time to complete the survey.  The survey will close on Tuesday, May 22, 2018 @ 5:00 pm.

The HPS 1:1 Technology Strategic Committee

Have a great week!

This Week in Fourth Grade

Hello Spring!

This week we celebrated the arrival of Spring (and the feeling of summer at times) by reading poetry and practicing our comprehension strategies outside.  The poem we looked at was Nothing Gold Can Stay by Robert Frost.  Students needed to utilize a number of their senses while comprehending this poem.  We also utilized our outdoor setting to help us better understand the poem.  Many students made a connection between where we sat outside and the meaning of the poem and many had some great inferences as to what the theme of the poem might be.  It was wonderful to see students thinking and discussing so deeply all the while enjoying the weather!  Below are some pictures of the activity:

Time Capsule

Our Time Capsule Closing Ceremony is fast approaching!  Please let us know if you need another copy of the list sent home. 

Save The Date!

Farley's Memorial Day Assembly will be held on Friday, May, 25th at 9:00.  Stay tuned for more details!

Football Frenzy!

Last week we started a cooperative group activity called Football Frenzy to help us to use our problem solving strategies to review some of the math concepts that we have learned this year.  On Monday the kids were put into teams.  The whole class was given a problem to solve.  The teams worked together to solve the problem using the problem solving strategies.  They needed to talk and discuss where to start with the problem and then how they were going to attack the problem using what they have learned.  Each team that worked together to come up with an answer was given the chance to choose a card that told the amount of yards that the team would move on the football field.  It was great to see the groups working as teams- talking and discussing their thinking!

Writing Workshop

We have successfully started our research project!  Each student had to make the decision about whether he or she would like to learn about Dolphins or Whales.  

The kids were able to take their learning from reading nonfiction texts to help them as they started to read the different texts about whales and dolphins.  They were able to use note-taking strategies that they had tried our during social studies and also learned a new strategy for taking notes on index cards.  When writing a research book we need to be in search of facts that make you say "WOW!!" or "COOL!"  Ask your child a "WOW" fact that he or she read about last week!  

This week we will continue to build our research notes and will begin to categorize our notes into groups.