Next week is American Education Week.
The 2012 Motto is: Great Public Schools: A Basic Right and Our Responsibility
We will be dressing up for some of the days.  Please see the schedule below.

Monday, Nov. 12 – Wear your favorite sweatshirt day
Wed., Nov. 14 – Wear red, white, and blue day
Fri., Nov. 16 – Black and Gold or School Logo shirt day

Reading

Our reading goal for the 2nd Quarter is 500 pages.  Be sure to check out the new info on Reading in 4J.  You can get there by clicking here.

Thursday, October 18th we went on a field trip to Coralville Lake.  We started at the visitor's center with a movie about the dam and floods followed by a question and answer session with Ranger Terry Escher.

Then we spent some time in the visitor's center looking at the fossils and stuffed animals native to the lake.  After Stopping for a class photo op we headed to the Gate House.

We were lucky to see the inside of the gate house as it is "top secret"!  Following that we headed for Fossil Gorge.  We saw many fossils and other interesting things.

Our last stop at Coralville Lake was a quick trip on the Veteran's Trail.

Because of the cold rainy day we decided to eat lunch at CoralRidge Mall.

And then we were off to the Museum of Natural History where we toured Iowa Hall, Mammal Hall, and Bird Hall.

This guy was a favorite.

And even with the cold wet weather a good time was had by all!

Thank you to the parents that accompanied us.

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Wow!  We have been so busy this past week.  Homecoming Week was very fun and we enjoyed seeing the kids dress up on each day.  The week concluded with a Pep Rally on Friday afternoon with the captains of the football, volleyball, and cross country teams.  The athletes stressed the fun they have while playing, but also pointed out the importance of keeping their grades up and homework.

math news...
We have time in math working with a great program on the ipads, Educreations.  This program allows us to make 1-take videos (no editing) explaining what we are learning in class.  We have found a few glitches, especially the fact that only one video can be created at a time as there is no saving.  So, we are alternating which classes make videos with partners and which make whole class videos.

Our goal in math was to make videos explaining and reviewing the target (secure) goals for Unit 1.  We hope to do these throughout the year.  The videos are private, meaning you have to have the url to access them as they are not searchable.  Hopefully these will become another resource for students as they are working at home.

There is a new page at the top of the blog called, "Links to Educreation Videos."  I will keep updating this page with all the links.

This week we moved back to unit 2, Using Numbers and Organizing Data.  Today we used fun size packs of M-n-M's to explore maximum, minimum, range, and mode.  We will also spend time reviewing multi-digit addition and subtraction.

social studies news...
Now that we are geniuses on landforms, we are also using Educreations to share that genius.  While working on these videos, we are constantly asking ourselves if they are "WOW", worthy of the web.  We only want to share accurate information while still paying attention to our verbal skills, written skills and grammar.  I will post these as we finish.

Next, we will study climate and natural resources.

field trip news... 
Our 4th Grade field trip to the Coralville Lake (visitor's center, gate house, fossil gorge) and to the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History is scheduled for THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18.  Your child will bring home a form on Friday asking you to indicate whether he/she will be bringing a sack lunch or will purchase a sack lunch from school that morning.  Please return this form by October 16 so we can let the kitchen know.

blog survey...
According to our latest survey, only 1 person has signed up to follow our blog and receive updates.  Please consider doing this.

parent-teacher conferences...
Conferences are scheduled for Thursday, November 1 and Thursday, November 8.  If you have not returned the bright green scheduling form, please do so as soon as possible so we can get those scheduled.

Field Trip

We will be going on a field trip on Thursday, October 18th.  We will leave school at 8:45 a.m. and return by 3:00 p.m.  We'll visit the Fossil Gorge and Museum of Natural History.  At this time we are looking for chaperones.  Please email or send a note to Mrs. Juilfs.  More information coming at a later date.

In the meantime, check out the programs offered at the Museum of Natural History.  You can find them HERE.

SCIENCE

Our first science unit is "Earth Materials".  We began with a QCE using a Snickers.  Students designed a test to prove their claim as to what a Snickers contains.  Most of us were surprised at what we later found is in a Snickers that we just couldn't prove.  The Snickers is similar to a rock in that it has more than one ingredient.

Pam Holz visited to teach us about the Rock Cycle.

READING

In reading we are almost finished with our first theme--"Journeys".  In this theme so far we have  read "Grandfather's Journey", "Akiak", "Finding the Titanic", and a chapter from "By the Shores of Silver Lake".  The students have especially enjoyed studying about the Titanic.  We will be taking our unit test soon.

Chapter book reading and writing book reports is coming along.  I hope everyone is reading at home each night.  Remember our first quarter goal is 400 pages.

Math

Mrs. Yoder recently finished teaching the first math unit which was Geometry.  Mrs. Juilfs brought in some quilts to share.  The students identified shapes they found in the quilts.

Sometimes looking at the back of an unfinished quilt square surprised us as it is hard to tell what shapes are sewn together when you look at the front.

Friday, September 14, 2012

dot day news...

Happy Dot Day!  We celebrated with so many activities!  After reading the book, The Dot, by Peter Reynolds, we made our own dots (our own marks) using compasses as a tool and then put our work in swirly frames.  Mrs. Juilfs worked in reading classes to create a quilt using buddy dots.  In math classes, we learned how Louis Braille made his mark creating the Braille alphabet, which helped Helen Keller.  We worked with the Braille alphabet to first decode a message and then write one ourselves with split peas as our dots.  Mrs. Yoder's class worked with a computer program, Animation-ish, to create cartoons of dots and Mrs. Juilfs's class used the ipads to go on a dot scavenger hunt.  We culminated the day by making dot t-shirts and taking a gallery walk to see all the projects created at KE throughout the day.  Below are some pictures...check out the rest on the "pictures" page.

A note about t-shirts...they will be sent home on Monday with washing instructions.  We are asking all students to wear their dot shirts on Tuesday.

social studies news...

The overall umbrella theme of 4th grade social studies is how where we live affects how we live, work, and play. 

To begin this theme, we have spent a lot of time with the basics of globes and maps, including a lot of vocabulary.  Ask your child to tell you about or define hemispheres, equator, prime meridian, continents, relative location, absolute location, latitude, longitude, and different landforms.

math news...

We are finishing our unit on Geometry.  We really enjoyed the manipulatives we used to get very "hands on."  We used straws and twist ties to build polygons and also shapes that were not polygons for various reasons.  We also worked with compasses to draw circles, concentric circles, and intersecting circles.  Next week we will learn that compasses can be used to draw equivalent line segments when a ruler is not available.  This was a unit full of vocabulary including the following:  line, line segment, ray, point, vertex, angle, polygon, regular polygon, quadrilateral, quadrangle, convex, concave, parallel, acute, obtuse, right angles, pentagon, hexagon, octagon, and equilateral triangle. 

guidance news...

 Mrs. Kehoe has started an 8-10 week unit with fourth graders.  She is working with the students to complete a workbook teaching that we are "Too Good for Violence."  This curriculum ties in perfectly with our anti-bully rules and helps the kids work on strategies to avoid and eliminate bullying.

rainbows returns to KE...

KE will be hosting the Rainbows program for kids grades K-6 again this year. Rainbows is a FREE loss program for kids who have experienced a divorce/separation in their family, a death in the family or a parent who has been deployed or other loss. The meetings are Thursdays after school starting Sept. 27. I am attaching the parent information on the program. 

Fourth grade has gotten off to a great start!  We have taken our first spelling tests, read our first story in reading, and discussed all of our rules.  The weather hasn't quite cooperated causing us to have three early release days last week due to heat.  Happily most fourth graders weren't all that thrilled to leave early!  That excitement is what we like to see!

Let's take a little look at our blog.  At the top of the blog in red are eight tabs to eight different pages.  Just click on the tile to go to that page.  The pages are Home, Important Links, Math Info, Reading Info, Discipline Plan, Pictures, Schedules, and About Us.  The Important Links page will lead you to links for reading games, math games, spelling lists, and the school newsletter among other things.  The Math Info page gives an overview of how math works in fourth grade.  The Reading Info page tells about reading chapter books, page requirements, and procedure.  Our Discipline Plan page tells about Time to Teach which is the plan both classrooms will be using.  The Photos page will contain photos we will post from time to time that you can copy if you like.  The Schedules page will direct you to the schedules for each classroom. (our schedules are not up to date yet) And finally, the About Us page will give you a little background about Mrs. Yoder and Mrs. Juilfs.  Home will always bring you back to this page.

On the right hand side this time we have a poll for you to take.  We are trying to gather a little data about internet availability.  Below that is the place for signing up for email notices when we have posted on the blog.  We hope all parents will subscribe to that.  Next is a link for Mrs. Juilfs' reading blog called, "Reading in 4J".  Just click on the title to go to that blog.  On that blog you will read articles about reading from time to time in addition to other information.  Next you will see lists of the cycle days, and important dates that affect fourth graders.  And below that is a link to the KE newsletter.

Below the photos of Mrs. Juilfs and Mrs. Yoder is a shelf of books that are popular among fourth graders.  And then contact information for both of us.  

Hopefully, you will take a little time to become familiar with our blog.  We will use this for most communication.

Just a reminder about our spelling packets--The last page contains a writing portion.  Students must use five different spelling words in their writing along with complete sentences.  

We're looking forward to a full four day week!