Xtramath webpage: https://xtramath.org/#/signin/student_other
Monday, November 28, 2016
Friday, November 25, 2016
Volume 15: 25 November 2016
With two and half days off, one would think we might accomplish less this week? The truth and reality is... we accomplished the same, if not more, learning! In preparation for our Health Fair, we were in full-swing working around the clock to collectively and creatively share our expertise on how the human body consists of different systems, which function together, to ensure the healthy function of our body. Students used measured yarn to add "intestines" to their digestive system posters, created timelines for a baby's development and growth on their reproductive system posters, created quizzes to challenge their audiences during and after their presentation, added 3D diagrams of the epidermal layers to their integumentary posters, and an array of activities to bring their presentation to life and captivate their audience's full attention.
As part of our final project, we had a serious community discussion - "Which feedback do you value more: teacher, student, or neither?" We watched a video called Austin's Butterfly, which illustrated how peer, or student, feedback can be incredibly helpful towards creating something amazing. We saw that giving clear, specific, detailed, encouraging, constant, and positive feedback can help a student to focus on the process of creating and improving, rather than emphasizing only the final product. With these ideas, we worked in groups of three and gave specific feedback on each other's posters. Each student found at least one piece of advice extremely helpful and used it to improve his/her poster, whereby, making it even more insightful. Of course, the process of giving peer feedback, connected to our community's belief that working together and building on our ideas is our path of being the change we want to happen around and within us. Each student took this to heart and really put forth the best advice they could, so we could take a shared responsibility in making the Health Fair a one to remember.
Between all our hard work, we continued to enjoy ourselves through a variety of community sharing rituals. We created fun ways to celebrate our work, in which students worked in groups of four to create an original gesture and accompanying words. For example, one group came up with the saying "Thanks a lot-ta for sharing your hard work." while sipping a cup of coffee. Get it?!
We also changed our base groups, or table groups, with a focus on what it means to be principled, or honest, caring, and taking responsibility for our actions. We thought hard about who would be principled and who might still be working towards making choices that are more principled. As such, students created new base groups, and an accompanying name that embodies what being principled means to them. While this was going on, we did our first Mannequin Challenge, or a 30-second video of everyone in the room completely frozen, like a tableau. The video is excellent and we plan on making several more, including a Movember one. We will be sure to post those videos!
We did do a little Xtramath practice today, and everyone made positive progress. We talked about the importance of putting in the extra effort and persevering during difficult challenges, such as the number of questions given during each practice session. We also talked about doing an informal 10 minutes a day session at home, or during the day, each day to sharpen our skills. Nothing mandatory, just a suggestion. Time will tell how students balance their goals to improve their Math skills and other skills, like managing their time to prepare for their monthly book share. If you are doing a session, be sure to complete 3 parts, or until the programs asks you to "sign-out" so that your progress is recorded! This is really important, so if you have any questions, please email me.
Speaking of book shares, they have been fantastic and continue to improve with each student. December book share guidelines are up, so read them over with your child so you both know what is expected. Right now, all students have found a book to enjoy reading and, then, perform a scene with shadow puppets. We are looking forward to them! Enjoy the week!
Monday: The Newberry Medal & Misleading Graphs activities
Tuesday: One spelling Activity & xtramath
Wednesday: IXL
Thursday: one session of xtramath.org (info here); Practice your spelling words for tomorrow's quiz.
Friday: Balance on your head and drink from a straw while reading a poem backwards.
As part of our final project, we had a serious community discussion - "Which feedback do you value more: teacher, student, or neither?" We watched a video called Austin's Butterfly, which illustrated how peer, or student, feedback can be incredibly helpful towards creating something amazing. We saw that giving clear, specific, detailed, encouraging, constant, and positive feedback can help a student to focus on the process of creating and improving, rather than emphasizing only the final product. With these ideas, we worked in groups of three and gave specific feedback on each other's posters. Each student found at least one piece of advice extremely helpful and used it to improve his/her poster, whereby, making it even more insightful. Of course, the process of giving peer feedback, connected to our community's belief that working together and building on our ideas is our path of being the change we want to happen around and within us. Each student took this to heart and really put forth the best advice they could, so we could take a shared responsibility in making the Health Fair a one to remember.
Between all our hard work, we continued to enjoy ourselves through a variety of community sharing rituals. We created fun ways to celebrate our work, in which students worked in groups of four to create an original gesture and accompanying words. For example, one group came up with the saying "Thanks a lot-ta for sharing your hard work." while sipping a cup of coffee. Get it?!
We also changed our base groups, or table groups, with a focus on what it means to be principled, or honest, caring, and taking responsibility for our actions. We thought hard about who would be principled and who might still be working towards making choices that are more principled. As such, students created new base groups, and an accompanying name that embodies what being principled means to them. While this was going on, we did our first Mannequin Challenge, or a 30-second video of everyone in the room completely frozen, like a tableau. The video is excellent and we plan on making several more, including a Movember one. We will be sure to post those videos!
We did do a little Xtramath practice today, and everyone made positive progress. We talked about the importance of putting in the extra effort and persevering during difficult challenges, such as the number of questions given during each practice session. We also talked about doing an informal 10 minutes a day session at home, or during the day, each day to sharpen our skills. Nothing mandatory, just a suggestion. Time will tell how students balance their goals to improve their Math skills and other skills, like managing their time to prepare for their monthly book share. If you are doing a session, be sure to complete 3 parts, or until the programs asks you to "sign-out" so that your progress is recorded! This is really important, so if you have any questions, please email me.
Speaking of book shares, they have been fantastic and continue to improve with each student. December book share guidelines are up, so read them over with your child so you both know what is expected. Right now, all students have found a book to enjoy reading and, then, perform a scene with shadow puppets. We are looking forward to them! Enjoy the week!
Homework
Along with reading 20 minutes each night, please complete the following:Monday: The Newberry Medal & Misleading Graphs activities
Tuesday: One spelling Activity & xtramath
Wednesday: IXL
Thursday: one session of xtramath.org (info here); Practice your spelling words for tomorrow's quiz.
Friday: Balance on your head and drink from a straw while reading a poem backwards.
Wednesday, November 23, 2016
December Book Share - Mysteries!
Mysteries!
December's book share is all about mysteries, one of my favorite genres! Please carefully read the guidelines below with your child and enjoy sharing the love of reading! |
| Example: One puppet show scene being acted out. |
Guidelines:
1. Find yourself a good mystery book. Show it to Mr Mike.
1. Find yourself a good mystery book. Show it to Mr Mike.
2. Read and enjoy!
3. Choose one scene from your book that you liked because it was funny, happy, sad, exciting, suspenseful, or made you stop and think.
4. Cut out a “shadow puppet” for each character in the scene you have chosen. Also, cut out shapes for important objects and scenery.
5. Plan out your performance. Select an interesting scene from your book. Start off with a sentence or two of introduction about what happened up to this point. Next, have your characters act out the scene you have chosen. Move the characters as you need, or want to. Make it interesting and gripping!
6. Conclude with a sentence or two. Try to come up with something more original then, “If you want to know what happens next, read the book.”
7. Be sure that you know your stuff! Don’t read a script to us! You will have to practice a few times before your presentation. Do it for your parents, your little brother, your teddy bear – anyone who will listen! Practicing will make a BIG difference!
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
Battle of the Books program
Dear Families,
We are happy to announce the start of the 2016-2017 Battle of the Books program. The goals of the program are to encourage and to recognize students who enjoy reading and to broaden reading interests.
This activity is open to all fourth and fifth graders who enjoy literature. Participation in this event will require lots of extracurricular reading by your child. There are 9 pre-selected titles on the list. Participants are expected to read these books and become experts on them. It is also possible for participants and their teams to decide if they want each of their team member to read all 9 books or share the responsibility by deciding that each one of them will read particular titles from the list and become experts on just those few. Students will then read the books on the list, discuss them, quiz each other on the contents, and compete in teams of 2-4 to correctly answer the questions based on the books.
The questions used all begin with “In which book...” so that the answer will always be the title of a book. The list of books for was compiled by Battle of the Books Coordinators who tried to ensure that genres and text difficulty vary so that readers may encounter a broad range of books.
Title
|
Author
|
Genre
|
The one and only Ivan
|
Katherine Applegate
|
Animal Fiction
|
Dear Mr. Henshaw
|
Beverly Cleary
|
Realistic Fiction
|
Charlotte’s Web
|
E.B. Web
|
Animal Fiction
|
Frindle
|
Robert Clement
|
Humorous Fiction
|
Wonder
|
R. J. Palacio
|
Realistic Fiction
|
Harriet the Spy
|
Louise Fitzhugh
|
Mystery and Detective stories
|
Holes
|
Louis Sachar
|
Mystery, Friendship
|
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone
|
J. K. Rowling
|
Fantasy
|
Inside out Back Again
|
Thanhha Lai
|
Realistic Fiction; Novel in verse
|
We have already introduced this to the students in Grade 4 and 5 and many accepted the event with enthusiasm and informed us of their interest. We will be sending permission slips to parents of these students. If your child hasn't expressed their interest to us yet, it is still not too late! Please talk to them and encourage them to sign up.
Starting February we will be holding monthly practice meetings. During the meetings we will discuss the books and practice answering trivia questions about them. We will meet once a month during lunch time. Students will need to be available to attend these meetings. If a student is unable for these meetings, we can try to make alternate arrangements.
Final competition will take place during the last week in May 2017.
The children will need the support and encouragement of their families to ensure success. should you have any questions, please contact Elementary School Librarian at elemlibrarian@tashschool.org .
We are looking forward to this fun and challenging reading activity.
Sincerely,
Tina Panella, Michael Ram, Kirsten Moss, Catherine Thornton, Sayyora Tairova
Battle of the Book Coordinators
Thursday, November 17, 2016
Volume 14: 18 November 2016
(Click me)
A week of final projects. Students conducted research using books, online resources, and from our inquiry into different human body systems. The culmination of their learning is an in-depth poster that tells a story. A story of what their system is, why it is essential to the entire body to function, and more. In the end, each student's work reflects a deeper understanding of how Our bodies consist of systems that work together for us to remain healthy. We hope to see you next week for our Health Fair!Our Comic Life is in its final stages as students input final dialogue, comments, images, text bubbles, and equations that explain just what the average 4th grader at TIS is like. They are working hard to explain and extend their thinking about what is "average" and how it represents an equal sharing of data. The concept of division and multiplication play an inverse role in this; whereby, knowing your multiplication facts helps solve division problems.
Speaking of multiplications facts, we started a new math website called xtramath.org to practice our math facts, including addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Unlike IXL, this website strictly practices root memorization and quickness of skill in recalling facts. It is sure to help us feel more confident in our math facts, as we soon tackle more challenging math concepts. Feel free to continue to practice xtramath.org as often as you would like, or at least 3 times a week. Here are the logins and PINS, case you need them. If you have any questions, please do email me.
Our writing is in the final stages of revising and editing. The variety of pieces, both in interpretation and format of writing is diverse and reflects the unique nature of each student's writing style. Some have mixed fiction and non-fiction, some have crafted prose, poetry, and others have created narratives that reflect the more fantastical elements of one's imagination. In all forms, students are using dialogue to reveal the inner thoughts and/or feelings of characters, drive the plot through events and actions, or illicit an emotional response from their readers. Alliteration, onomatopoeia, repetition of certain phrases, and strong adverbs to bring our verbs alive are just a few ways students have chosen to bring their sensory details alive as well. In our final stages of writing, students are encouraged to publish their writing in a manner that suites the topic, and makes the reader feel as if they are "watching a movie." As such, one student has drawn a huge eye and written her story on it. Colorful, creative, authentic, and reflective of her use of writer's craft, she has captured the spirit of writing with passion and zaniness. Enjoy the week!
Homework
Along with reading 20 minutes each night, please complete the following:Wednesday: Practice your human body presentation. See the email I sent home about ways to enhance your presentation. It is totally optional!
Thursday: IXL Grade 4 Math Probability & Statistics B4 Mean, Median, Mode, and Range; if this is too challenging, click Grade 3 and do the same assignment there please.
Friday: Make an ice-cone hat with the flavor blue inside it and sip it using a twisty, crazy straw, while sitting in bed with a book; Be sure to clean the mess up afterwards:)
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Volume 13: 11 November 2016
Have you ever asked yourself, "I wonder what the 'Best Part of Me' is?" We have and it is astonishing how we interpret ourselves. Some say their eyes, hands, heart, or brain. Perhaps the best part of the writing piece we began this week is how it stretches our thinking as to what conventional writing is. Sure, essays, poems, stanzas, lyric essays, applications, text messages, blogging, notes to a friend, and so on is considered writing; however, how often do we write with a mix of realistic fiction, that includes a red blood cells journey through the heart, a myth of how neurons send messages via electricity instead of neurons physically poking one another, or how your brain has taught your misbehaving hands and feet a lesson by instigating a war between them? These are just a few topics and directions we interpreted the topics: Best Part of Me and our understanding of how body systems work together to function and keep us healthy.
Beyond intellectually stimulating and creatively inspiring, students are pushing their own writer's craft to include sensory details to help the reader feel like they are watching a movie, while they read. We identified snippets of professional authors' works and how they used sensory details to describe characters, settings, thoughts, and feelings through words that provoke the senses of smell, sight, touch, sound, and even taste. With such a creative lens and approach, our writing is coming alive. Over the next week, we will revise and edit our pieces, only to publish them in a rather more unconventional way as well. In just our brainstorming and drafting sessions, students are sharing ideas of how to present their work in a way that matches their writing - forcing their readers to feel and experience their writing, rather than just read it. We can not wait to see what marvels they create!
Earlier this week, I was guiding a student on how to calculate the average of his/her data and I took in a momentary at the community around us. What I saw was incredible; we were all busy in every corner of the room, all working at our own pace along this challenging journey to understand how to conceptually explain what average is and how to calculate it using addition and division. Sure, we as adults know the formula, but do we understand what it means? Did we know when we were in 4th grade? Did we know how and why and when to use it outside of our small classroom? If you were like me, than the answer is probably, "No." However, in our community it is not enough to understand how to calculate, but we strive to understand why and when to calculate and how to use this in real-life. There may be blurry eyes now and again, but each day our collective knowledge builds which each individual's contributions as we work towards the same goals. What a journey!
Some of you saw our work in our centers during Math Morning this week. We were so proud that you could actually see and feel what it is like to be here, learning with us. The culmination of our analysis, questioning, and extension of how we can use data all around us to express the world and our learning will be a Comic Life. This project includes calculations, explanations of data, and implications of the data. We all can not wait to share our hard work.
Our field trip to the clinic, as proposed by a student, was a marvelous success. The doctors their worked hard to extend our thinking by providing "real-life" scenarios of what they might encounter when treating patients. It is clear, checking the patient's pulse, blood pressure, and breathing is vital (ha - get it?) to understanding what might be ailing someone. Students were able to see how doctors, nurses, and clinic technicians use a variety of tools and equipment, such as an ultrasound machine to see soft tissue, take x-ray images to find fractures in bones, and hear with stethoscopes to identify abnormalities within the lungs or heart. Beyond that, solving the mysteries of why "Mr. Mike" and "Ms. Tina" were sick on their respective visits to the mountains and holiday in Tanzania, helped students investigate real-life causes of illness and how to take precautionary measures to keep our body healthy. When our mysteries were solved, we even had a change to listen to each other's hearts, look inside each other's ears, and see that hanging thing - our uvula - in the back of our throat with real doctor tools. Thanks to the clinic and its staff for all your support in expanding our minds and bringing real-life meaning to our learning.
Monday: Math Word Problems & Continuing Number Patterns activities
Tuesday: We learned a new math tool today! A website where we can practice our math facts. We are all beginning with basic addition to get used to the website first, and then we will change it to meet our needs. Here is the information you need to do your homework tonight:
1. Click here, or type this website into your browser (i.e. Chrome, Safari): xtramath.org
2. Click "Sign in"
3. Enter "Email": michaelr@tashschool.org
4. Enter "First Name": Click here to find your name (i.e. It is your IXL login without @tashkent)
5. Enter "PIN": Click here to find your PIN.
If you have tried for 10 minutes to log in and it just is not working, please email me and I will try to help. If I don't email you back within 5 minutes, please just try IXL. Happy Math!
Wednesday: IXL Math Grade 4 J.5, J.7, J.12 to practice graphing
Thursday:
Friday: Read for 200,000 minutes, while doing constant push-ups. Afterwards, you should have some lemonade.
Beyond intellectually stimulating and creatively inspiring, students are pushing their own writer's craft to include sensory details to help the reader feel like they are watching a movie, while they read. We identified snippets of professional authors' works and how they used sensory details to describe characters, settings, thoughts, and feelings through words that provoke the senses of smell, sight, touch, sound, and even taste. With such a creative lens and approach, our writing is coming alive. Over the next week, we will revise and edit our pieces, only to publish them in a rather more unconventional way as well. In just our brainstorming and drafting sessions, students are sharing ideas of how to present their work in a way that matches their writing - forcing their readers to feel and experience their writing, rather than just read it. We can not wait to see what marvels they create!
Earlier this week, I was guiding a student on how to calculate the average of his/her data and I took in a momentary at the community around us. What I saw was incredible; we were all busy in every corner of the room, all working at our own pace along this challenging journey to understand how to conceptually explain what average is and how to calculate it using addition and division. Sure, we as adults know the formula, but do we understand what it means? Did we know when we were in 4th grade? Did we know how and why and when to use it outside of our small classroom? If you were like me, than the answer is probably, "No." However, in our community it is not enough to understand how to calculate, but we strive to understand why and when to calculate and how to use this in real-life. There may be blurry eyes now and again, but each day our collective knowledge builds which each individual's contributions as we work towards the same goals. What a journey!
Some of you saw our work in our centers during Math Morning this week. We were so proud that you could actually see and feel what it is like to be here, learning with us. The culmination of our analysis, questioning, and extension of how we can use data all around us to express the world and our learning will be a Comic Life. This project includes calculations, explanations of data, and implications of the data. We all can not wait to share our hard work.
Our field trip to the clinic, as proposed by a student, was a marvelous success. The doctors their worked hard to extend our thinking by providing "real-life" scenarios of what they might encounter when treating patients. It is clear, checking the patient's pulse, blood pressure, and breathing is vital (ha - get it?) to understanding what might be ailing someone. Students were able to see how doctors, nurses, and clinic technicians use a variety of tools and equipment, such as an ultrasound machine to see soft tissue, take x-ray images to find fractures in bones, and hear with stethoscopes to identify abnormalities within the lungs or heart. Beyond that, solving the mysteries of why "Mr. Mike" and "Ms. Tina" were sick on their respective visits to the mountains and holiday in Tanzania, helped students investigate real-life causes of illness and how to take precautionary measures to keep our body healthy. When our mysteries were solved, we even had a change to listen to each other's hearts, look inside each other's ears, and see that hanging thing - our uvula - in the back of our throat with real doctor tools. Thanks to the clinic and its staff for all your support in expanding our minds and bringing real-life meaning to our learning.
Homework
Please continue to prepare your book presentation. Practicing your summary - including the setting, main characters, plot (main events), and conflict (problem) - helps the audience get a feel for the story. Try it! In addition to reading 20 minutes each night, please consider the following...Monday: Math Word Problems & Continuing Number Patterns activities
Tuesday: We learned a new math tool today! A website where we can practice our math facts. We are all beginning with basic addition to get used to the website first, and then we will change it to meet our needs. Here is the information you need to do your homework tonight:
1. Click here, or type this website into your browser (i.e. Chrome, Safari): xtramath.org
2. Click "Sign in"
3. Enter "Email": michaelr@tashschool.org
4. Enter "First Name": Click here to find your name (i.e. It is your IXL login without @tashkent)
5. Enter "PIN": Click here to find your PIN.
If you have tried for 10 minutes to log in and it just is not working, please email me and I will try to help. If I don't email you back within 5 minutes, please just try IXL. Happy Math!
Wednesday: IXL Math Grade 4 J.5, J.7, J.12 to practice graphing
Thursday:
Friday: Read for 200,000 minutes, while doing constant push-ups. Afterwards, you should have some lemonade.
Monday, November 7, 2016
Volume 12: 4 November 2016
The zaniness continues... Full of laughter and fun, we learned by doing this week. Our study of different human body systems continued, as we explored the nervous system and the skeletal system. Again, we examined three important questions for each system: What is it? Why do we have it? and created What if...? questions. In our centers, we quickly discovered that each system carries out specific functions and has multiple purposes. Some functions are voluntary, we control, and some are involuntary, we do not control and just happen without us needing to think about it. The photographs will explain more.
Our study of data, or statistics is coming to its head as we begin our final project using the app Comic Life. We began our project by creating a question that requires a numerical value for an answer. We, then, surveyed every student in fourth grade and recorded our data on recording sheets. From this, students will create a Comic Life, which is an app that allows you to create a poster-like story that is similar to real comics! Each student has creative freedom to present their analysis of the data, including the results and explanation of the mean (average), median, mode, and range. To extend our thinking, students will include challenging questions that relate to the graph, which they will also include, in the project. Pretty sweet!
We have begun our November book shares and they are awesome! Students' hard work is evident in their detailed background scenes and colorful characters. It is also clear that we have been practicing at home, as our expression is varied to capture and keep the audiences attention.
Our focus on sentence structure continued this week, as we worked how to use a variety of sentences, including imperative, interrogative, exclamatory, and declarative sentences to make our writing sound more vivacious and interesting. Additionally, we worked on the challenging skill of identifying and using adverbs in our sentences to help evoke passion and emotion in our writing. This week we will use these skills to write a piece called, The Best Part of Me. Can't wait!
We were lucky to have a very cool musical guest from Israel grace us with his multi-talented musicianship and song-ship abilities. Hilarious in demeanor and entertaining, he shared instruments from around the world that he has collected along his journeys. A video of his performance is up on the TIS YouTube channel, so check it out. Enjoy the week!
Homework: Continue practicing your book share presentations, reading 20 minutes each night, and complete the follow...
Our study of data, or statistics is coming to its head as we begin our final project using the app Comic Life. We began our project by creating a question that requires a numerical value for an answer. We, then, surveyed every student in fourth grade and recorded our data on recording sheets. From this, students will create a Comic Life, which is an app that allows you to create a poster-like story that is similar to real comics! Each student has creative freedom to present their analysis of the data, including the results and explanation of the mean (average), median, mode, and range. To extend our thinking, students will include challenging questions that relate to the graph, which they will also include, in the project. Pretty sweet!
We have begun our November book shares and they are awesome! Students' hard work is evident in their detailed background scenes and colorful characters. It is also clear that we have been practicing at home, as our expression is varied to capture and keep the audiences attention.
Our focus on sentence structure continued this week, as we worked how to use a variety of sentences, including imperative, interrogative, exclamatory, and declarative sentences to make our writing sound more vivacious and interesting. Additionally, we worked on the challenging skill of identifying and using adverbs in our sentences to help evoke passion and emotion in our writing. This week we will use these skills to write a piece called, The Best Part of Me. Can't wait!
We were lucky to have a very cool musical guest from Israel grace us with his multi-talented musicianship and song-ship abilities. Hilarious in demeanor and entertaining, he shared instruments from around the world that he has collected along his journeys. A video of his performance is up on the TIS YouTube channel, so check it out. Enjoy the week!
Homework: Continue practicing your book share presentations, reading 20 minutes each night, and complete the follow...
Monday: Calendar comprehension activity
Tuesday: Pictographs activity; please choose 1 spelling activity to complete as well
Wednesday: How far can you get on IXL section J? Please choose 2 that you want to master. If you're finding them difficult, find the Grade 3 version of the same activity to complete. Another tip from a student is put a sticky-note over the score and time, which helps you focus on the learning and practice rather than the score. Thanks!
Thursday: Analyze line graphs activity
Friday: Balance 2 plates spinning on sticks, while kicking a football up to score a goal, all while you read a book that is held upside-down. I need photographic evidence of this one:)
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