Week of January 12-16, 2015

This has been another week filled with long division for fourth graders.

We also read The Thirst Quencher and designed our very own vending machine. Then we used multiplication and division to tell how many items the machine holds. We also went on to everfi.com to practice personal financial literacy. Third graders continued to work on 2 digit by 1 digit multiplication. We read Party Plans by the Number! Then we broke up into groups and started working on plans for a picnic. This event planning involve a lot of math. Second graders enjoyed using dry erase boards to practice multiplication. We also read Each Orange Had 8 Slices then we drew pictures and math problem that went along with the pictures in the book.

This week in reading we continued our novel/author studies. We continued to analyze and discuss the many layers of meaning. We started our passages for homework as a way to practice analyzing text.

Our writing centers started this week -- we will explain them to you this weekend in portfolio review.

We continued our study of energy in science and enjoyed some hands-on exploration of heat, light, sound, and mechanical energy.

Using a few toy cars to investigate the movement of mechanical energy...

rockin' out with some dancing rice to visualize sound vibrations...

observing the effects of the sun's light energy with some color-changing ultraviolet beads...

and demonstrating how heat energy affects molecular speed.

Fourth grade ended the week with a fantastic tour of Texas history at the Bob Bullock History Museum. A lone-star-sized thanks to our chaperones! We had a great time!