Christopher, Volume 27: March 9, 2015

"Mr. Mike, will you be my twin?" said Anthony.
With a mile-wide smile, Mr. Mike exclaimed "What do you think?"
(We've been adding dialogue to our weather myths to bring our characters to life!)

Spirit week, pumpkin rotting, ballroom-dancing, strategies to solve all types of addition and subtraction word problems, authentic myths where we explain elements of weather, researching geographical landmarks of our cities, related problem sets (equations), learning through playing games like Close to 1,000, birthday cake lollipops, and fabulous book shares basically sums up our week.

Next week, we have author David Schwartz coming! He wrote "Rotten Pumpkin" and "How Many is a Million?" We are excited to have him! There should be opportunities to purchase books he has written, so they can be autographed. It really is something special to meet and interact with an author of a book you love! I hope you laugh with me as you view this week's pictures!

Lastly, April Book Share guidelines are posted on the blog. Please read it carefully. We have accounted for March break!

Owl:
Christopher

Homework:
Monday: 2-4 Cursive Writing pages; In our assembly today, David Schwartz talked about the things he wondered about when he was young like "How many blades of grass in a baseball field?" or "How may grains of sand on a beach?" or "How many hairs on your head?" Please write a list of wonders that deals with numbers. Please choose your favorite one and explain how you might go about finding your answer. You don't actually have to find the answer! Just explain! Bring it in to share for community meeting.
Tuesday: Math activity Commas
Wednesday: IXL Grade 4 A.1Place values A.2Convert between place values
Thursday:

Sometimes math is like getting stuck in our shoes. 

 Adding soil (in our pajamas), so our pumpkin rots away!

 It's weather myth time! Independent, peer, and teacher conferencing going on!

 Mr. Mike's group playing Close to 100 and arguing over different strategies and points of view for how 1,000 is used in real-life.

 We worked hard on our March book sharing posters!

 Twin day turned quickly into triplet day!

 Reading up on author David Schwartz and sharing characters during community meeting.

 Some real characters!

 It's on! Math word problems need team work for sure!

Creating stunts and tumbling performance

Students have been working with a partner in a collaborative on their stunts and tumbling performance in groups. Also students have enjoyed playing  Skyscrapers dodge ball game.

Skyscrapers dodge ball game

Practice 

April Book Sharing

April Book Presentations:  Biographies

(1.  no presentations are due until April 14th or later.  Students do not need to work on these over spring break! 2.  no puppets should be perfect!) 

Puppet talk!

1.    Have your book biography OK’D

2.    Read and enjoy your book

3.    Make a hand puppet of the person your book is about

4.    You will need to conduct an interview with your puppet in front of the class

5.    Start your interview with a short introduction of your “guest.” Tell who he or she is, why the person is important enough to have a book about himself or herself, and when he or she lived.  If your book doesn't tell you this, you may need to do some quick research!

6.    Use the following questions in your interview:

·       What is the title of the book about you?

·       Who wrote this book?

·       What part of your life does this cover?

·       Where does this book take place?

·       What was the _________ part of the book? ( choose one-funniest, saddest, happiest, scariest, most exciting, boring)

·       What did you like best about the way the author told your story?

·       What did you like least about the way author told your story?

Optional questions:

·       Did the author talk about why you were famous?

·       Did the author talk about your family?

·       Did the author include anything that you wish he or she would not have?

·       Ask anything you would like to know! 

Junke, Volume 26: March 2, 2015

Field trip to "Hamza" weather station!

A few notes before all the pictures that will show how much fun the last week and half has been. We are starting our final project in our inquiry of the weather. Students are researching the climate and weather of a city of their choice. The catch is that we are all writing about the same day in January! This week we also began writing our own original weather myths. In these myths, students explain an element of weather and why it exists today using their imagination and creativity. Our science experiments continue as well: weather vanes to find wind direction and others. We have made snowflakes, which are made of snow crystals. You should try making them at home! Even more, we explored the Tashkent weather station "Hamza". In math, we are finishing up our study of landmarks (using important numbers) to help us solve arithmetic and word problems. We are working really hard to master our multiplication facts and fun songs like the one's listed below will only help. Try listening and singing along whenever you are feeling like dancing to good music. This Friday, Feb. 27 6:00-7:00pm is the talent show for 5,000 soum. Please come to support the many talents of our school. Lastly, Spirit Week is going to turn TIS upside-down. Be a part of it! Join in the silliness and dress up! You know I will be dressed to the Nines!

Multiplication Songs

http://www.fastertimestables.com/cool-times-tables-songs/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzXcI49jdV0

http://www.songsforteaching.com/math/multiplicationsongs.htm

Schedule for Spirit Week: Starting Monday, March 2^nd

Monday  Pajama day

Tuesday Twin day

Wednesday  Character day

Thursday Retro/Old fashion day

Friday Owl Day/Blue and White

Owl of the Week

Junke

Homework

Monday: "What Did they Say?" Dialogue Activity
Tuesday: Math Reasoning Activity
Wednesday: IXL Math Grade 4 B.9Estimate sums: word problems C.7Estimate differences: word problems
Thursday: Math Mystery Machines Activity
Friday: Go out the mountains and have fun... No, wait. That is my homework! Your homework is to give your mom and dad a big hug and read a funny story to them!

Making Weather Vanes and recording our temperatures (of the air of course)!

 Hassaan is clearly the sun, as JunHyeok guides the Earth (Junke) to rotate and revolve. 

 Math Centers!

We love math centers! Factors of 300, solving word problems, and solving equations. 

No, it is not raining in the room. It is Braelyn's spy mobile. Thanks for sharing!

 Field Trip: Taskent Weather Station "Hamza"

 Left: Measuring the ground temperature.

Right: Gauze is how they "catch" and collect air samples to measure the air quality.

 Left: Rain gauge, or collector.

Right: So you think it's hot? Well, in the box are 4 thermometers. The station reports the temperature in the "shade", rather than in direct sunlight (which can get up to 70 degrees Celsius)!

 Inside, we find old tools, pictures, and the history of the weather station in Uzbekistan.

Very cool stuff!

 We did the movement of Earth's rotation and revolution around the sun with our bodies, but this time we did it with a light bulb (sun) and a globe (Earth) to learn why we have seasons on Earth. Did you know the tilt of the Earth is what causes the seasons? Cool Fact!

Margaret, Volume 25: February 23, 2015

Hello! This is a short blog post that includes this week's homework and some school spirit news. Enjoy the week!

Homework:
Monday: Suffix activity
Tuesday: Grammar activity
Wednesday: IXL Math Grade 4 D.3Choose the multiples of a given number up to 12 and D.4Identify factors
Thursday: Quotation Marks and Underlines Worksheet
Friday: Rest while reading a book

Next week, STUCO, our student-led organization is sponsoring Spirit Week! Please join in the silliness and embrace TIS! The wackiness begins Monday, March 2nd!

Monday  Pj’s day

Tuesday Twin day

Wednesday  Character day

Thursday Retro/Old fashion day

Friday Owl Day/Blue and White

Beginner group. 

Grade 4 beginners learned a greeting rhyme in Russian. Now we are able to say it perfectly!!! Watch us!

Intermediate group. 

Russian Intermediate students are finishing their project with the thick conversational Russian book through which they have been learning new vocabulary, grammar phenomena and parts of speech.

Advanced group.

На уроках литературы мы читаем рассказы и повести детских писателей, если есть экранизация этого произведения,то просматриваем его.Следующий этап нашей работы- обсуждения, ответы на вопросы (письменно или устно) и заключительная часть – записываем краткое содержание прочитанного произведения.  У каждого студента есть папка по литературе,  куда он складывает все свои материалы. Также учим стихотворения русских современных и классических поэтов.

В классе русского языка есть небольшая библиотека. Ребята могут приходить и брать книги на дом. Домашнее чтение очень повысит технику чтения вашего ребёнка и расширит его кругозор. 

Мы подключились к юниту “ Weather”  ребята научились описывать временна года по тематическим картинкам. Они использовали знакомую лексику и грамматические структуры для того, чтобы написать эссе о сезонах.