Hi there. It was another busy day in the 4th grade. I was able to catch up all the kids that were absent yesterday in our Alaska Unit. Whew!
In math, we reduced fraction by finding the greatest common factor. Wow! This one blew their minds. This is SOOOOOOOOOOOO hard if you don't know your basic facts, which is WAY to many of these kids. I have been sending home their tests to you. Are they giving them to you??? I am not seeing a lot of improvement in this area. I will be removing their multiplication charts on their name tags next week as they can't have them to use on the standardized testing. WAY too many kids are relying on these still. They MUST know them like they know their name!!! I am suspecting that I will see many frustrated kids when the charts disappear. If I looked back on this years blog posts I bet I have begged everyone to help learn these at home. They have xtramath.org. They have games on the blog (which they should be playing the level they need help on not the easy ones like zeros, ones, twos, fives, or tens.) You have to help push them. Once again all I can do at this point is BEG you to help them. Flashcards at the table every single night to keep them fresh will work wonders I promise! PLEASE!!!
We went over our Volcano projects this morning. We gave them an information sheet on ONE way to make a volcano. They do NOT have to use this method. HOWEVER, they must use the 2 Liter DIET soda bottle and hard base for the bottom. Other than that, they are allowed to be as creative as they want. Again, they do NOT have to use the method we suggested...only the pop bottle and solid base. We also reminded them that no matter what method they use to create their volcanoes, they need to leave from the rim under the lid to the top of the lid showing. They must be able to get their hand in their volcano and unscrew the lid. All volcanoes are due on March 14th. Please leave at home until then. Kids may create scenes using paint, dinosaurs, little figurines, under water volcanoes, Snow volcanoes in Alaska, or whatever they can come up with. The "sky" is the limit with volcanoes!!!! Ha Ha!
Rusty will be here LIVE tomorrow. He dropped by today to say hi, but he will be talking to the kids tomorrow morning. They don't want to miss this!!!
Have a wonderful evening, and don't forget those library books. :0)
