What we're learning



Olympia Field Trip

 

We had our big field trip to the Capitol on Tuesday!

class pic at the Winged Victory Monument

in front of the Legislative Building steps- did you know there are 42 steps up to the top because Washington was the 42nd State?

Sitting in the Supreme Court!

Our "Appellate Attorney" Alexander

Pleading their case to the Justices

In the Governor's Boardroom!

The week of:  March 11th, 2013

Written by:  Tessa and Alexander

Math:  In math this week we have started to add and subtract fraction and finding fractions of a whole, and the class is rapidly progressing!

Reading:  We have been working on the “Main idea” in reading using the books, “Flight, the story of Charles Lindbergh” and “Amelia Earhart.” We also started a new read-aloud: “Lightning Thief” and we’re learning a lot about Greek Mythology!

Our final "class" paragraph on the states of matter. Each group wrote one sentence to support our topic sentence, then we edited and revised.

Writing: We wrote leprechaun letters to our kindergarten buddies, (Don’t tell them it was us!) and had a lot of fun coming up with creative names for our leprechauns. We also wrote a class paragraph all about the states of matter.

Science/Social Studies:  We finished up our hands-on matter unit, and started on a unit on government. We are learning about the different branches of the government and will be going to Olympia in a few weeks to learn more.

Exploring Whatzit- a "mystery matter" that has properties of both a solid and a liquid (it's cornstarch and water!)

The Whatzit up close- at first the students thought it was really gross, but then they really got into it and got messy testing its properties!

Other:  Marketplace is coming up, and everyone’s heads are boiling with new, creative, and fun ideas.  Better get started! Report cards are coming home today too!

The Week of February 25th, 2013

 

We had a great first week back from break! We started the week off with an art lesson from Pam Svore. We did Still Life paintings and used watercolor and oil pastel.

The students worked on their Book Talks, which they will be presenting next week in class.

 

For Science, the students conducted evaporation experiments and tested things like the type of container and how it affects evaporation.

 

Students were excited for PJ day and a visit from author Kim Baker.

 

 

 

The Week of February 11th, 2013

This week we worked hard on long division and on finishing our Personal Narratives. We still had lots of fun though with Secret Pals, a Valentine's Day Breakfast, Art Docent, and even a Marble Party on Friday!

Secret Pals Lunch (in the classroom!!)

Yummy Valentine Pancakes!!

The winner for "Out of This World" Valentine Box!

The winner for "Most Colorful" Valentine box!

We are ready for a week off after working so hard! Happy Mid-Winter Break!

 

The Week of February 1st, 2013

 

This week on Monday, we had artist Pam Svore come do an art lesson! We made space pictures, and drew different kinds of rockets!

 In Science, we started our unit on Matter. We investigated solids, liquids, and gasses, and discovered that the mass and volume of solids and liquids don't change if you change the shape of them.

On Thursday, our class went on a field trip to the Bellevue College Planetarium! We loved looking at constellations and learning about our Night Sky!



Friday was the school competition for the Global Reading Challenge. Over 40 4th and 5th graders have been preparing for this big day for the past few months. All of the teams did so well, and it was such a close score! The winning team, who will go on to the District Competition on March 1st, was "Super Awesomeness"- and 3 members of our class (Liam, Romana, and Richa) are on that team! Congrats to everyone who participated!

The week of January 25th, 2013

By Romana

Math:

This week in math we did the triple-digit traditional multiplication. We also reviewed estimating number models. The last thing we did was the unit 5 math test.

 

Science:

We finished our space unit and learned about gravity and air resistance. Later in the week we learned about Yuri Gagarin and he was the first person in space. We also learned about different constellations.

 Writing

We learned about the story staircase. And we were writing our draft for personal narrative

 

Reading:

We started reading a book called “Ghost Canoe.” It is a global reading challenge book.  We aldo did an art project with all of the precepts (rules about important things) from the book "Wonder"

 

The week of January 11, 2013

By Liam and Alivia

 

This week was Sockeye Booster Week, and each day we all focused on a difference Sockeye expectation like being respectful, responsible, safe, and caring.

 

In writing we are starting to write Personal Narratives, so we've been working on a lot of dialogue.

 

In reading we are doing Guided Reading groups, where we meet in small groups with Mrs. Shero. For Read-Aloud we are reading Shakespeare's Secret which is a mystery book.

 

For math we are working on multiplication and we learned the partial products method and the traditional method.

 

We just stared a Space unit for Science, and we are studying a lot of models and learning about how models are used. Did you know that if the sun was the size of a big beach ball, then the earth would only be the size of a small red-hot candy, and the moon would be a tiny sprinkle?

 

 

December 14, 2012

Marketplace!!

 

The entire 4th grade had a blast participating in Markeplace. Each student made an item to sell, and they used their money that they've earned in class this year (from doing their class jobs) to purchase things. There was a wide variety of goods sold at Markeplace including jewelry, bookmarks, bowls, games, and yummy treats. They learned many great lessons in this first round of marketplace about supply/demand, pricing, quality, etc, and our June Marketplace is sure to be even better than the first!

 

 

 

The week of November 16th, 2012

By Alexander and Laura

 

We had our first Sockeye Assembly of the year and they showed our video that we made for the school! On Wednesday, we got to eat popcorn and watch "Elf" because we filled the Marble Jar!

 

In math we are learning about decimals and fractions. We are using base-ten blocks to help us with the decimals and place value.

 

We started Social Studies this week and we are doing a lot of things with maps. We started with a world map and then a map of North America.

 

In reading we got to start RAZ Kids and we can do it at home too. Our reading stamina is up to 45 minutes.

 

We got to meet with our Kindergarten Buddies and we made Turkey cards with them. Also, our class got the Golden Garbage Can award this week! (and we have the Golden Tennis Shoe for PE too!)

 

Alivia and her buddy Aisha with their finished Turkey

With our buddies

Watching "Elf" for our Marble Party!

Holding the "Golden Garbage Can"!

The week of November 9th, 2012

By Laura and Nina

 

We finished our ecosystems unit in science and took apart our ecocolumns. All of the fish survived, so some students got to take them home as pets.

 

We took a math test for Unit 3 and we started Unit 4 which is about decimals.

 

We had a special guest from Seattle Tilth and he taught us about worms. Did you know that a worm is a boy and a girl at the same time? We also learned they have 5 hearts!

A giant centipede

sorting what is soil and what is not soil

holding worms!

 

 

The week of November 2nd, 2012

By Charlotte and Richa

 

This week in writing we talked a lot about using voice, and practiced writing with strong verbs. Also, each of us got to write our own spooky haunted house story.

 

This week we read a book called "Animal Senses." On Friday we made a t-chart for questions and answers, because our new reading comprehension strategy is questioning. We picked out our own non-fiction books and are writing questions we have about them.

 

In math this week we learned about using parentheses in number sentences.

 

In science, we finished polluting our ecocolumns and we improved on our process for cleaning up an oil spill in a model river. We wanted to get the lowest score for the ecosystem impact score, and the lowest score in the class was 8. Anything above a 3 means it will affect the plants and animals in the ecosystem, so there is still lots of room for improvement!

 

Wednesday was Halloween, and for our party we rotated around to all the 4th grade rooms. First, we went to Mrs. Ness' room to do Readers Theater, then we came to our room to decorate cookies and do crazy puzzles. Finally, we went to Ms. Esom's room to take out the guts and seeds out of a pumpkin and found the mean, median, and mode of the seeds that we each pulled out.

 

The week of October 26th, 2012

By Tessa and Jason

In science we updated our notes on our ecocolumns and started our pollution experiments. We had fun observing and watering our ecocolumns. Surprisingly, most of our crickets are now deceased. Although, all of the fish still live. The snails however, have been lazy, as usual.

When we polluted, we learned that some materials for containing or removing oil worked better than others.

cleaning up a river oil spill

Modeling a river ecosystem Food Web

Matthew P said, “We had a fantastic week in math.” And indeed we did! We progressed further into the fields of multiplication and division, and converting inches to miles on a map scale.

We had a great week with our kindergarten buddies. We created paper pumpkins with the kindergarteners and got to know them a bit better.

 

 In PE, we had an awesome time moving through this year’s school obstacle course. We crawled through dank caverns, swung over bogs filled with fire breathing toads, and traversed unknown  jungles, all during “ The Great Escape”    

 

The week of October 19, 2012

By Liam and Tristan

 

In math we're really focusing on multiplication and division. We took our first 50 facts test and we will be doing one every couple of weeks.

 

In reading we're looking for "I Wonder" statements in expository texts, and we finished reading "A Long Walk to Water" for Read Aloud. We are now starting the book "100 Cupboards"

 

In Science we are starting to pullute our experiment ecocolumns. The pollutants are Acid Rain, Fertilizer, and Road Salt. We also did a mid-unit Science Notebook check and had our parents look at it.

 

In wrting we are finishing writing Fall poems, and we wrote about the Akobo Desert after we finished reading "A Long Walk to Water"

 

The week of: October 12, 2012

By Matthew P and Lauren

Right now we are reading A Long Walk To Water. We just finished Wonder and we made concept maps of all the characters from the book. We also wrote book reviews and we will publish them on the library system next week. We also got a Diary of a Wimpy Kid Third Wheel  sneak peek booklet.

We finally finished our ecocolumns and will start our pollution experiments next week. Did you know a cricket can jump up to 4 feet high?

The week of: October 5, 2012

Written by: Romana and Kai

Math: We were reviewing ballpark estimates, column addition and partial sums addition. We also learned about finding landmarks in data. We did a fun graph with raisins to see how many was in each box and then found the minimum, maximum, range, mode and mean.

 

Reading: We got to 38 minutes in our reading stamina and we are also almost finished reading our read aloud book Wonder. We were finding non-fiction text features in magazines and news articles.

Writing: We were writing How-to paragraphs (directions on how to do something) 

Science:  We started building our ecosystem terrariums and aquariums. We put soil in the bottles and planted mustard seeds and rye grass seeds. We also filled up the aquarium with water and little mosquito fish, pond snails, algae, duckweed, and elodea.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other: On Friday we had art docents and we were drawing still life with charcoal, colored pencil and pencil. Also, on Wednesday we got to meet with our kindergarten buddies and we read them books

Learning Update September 28, 2012

Written by:   Alivia and Julie

Math:  we have done shapes and line segments and math test and we did out times tables we did subtraction

Reading: we keep on trying to beat our time in reading right now we are at 30 min. Mr. Orser the Literacy Specialist came to teach us about text  features of non-fiction like captions, photographs, and maps.

We created collages with our Reading Spot picture
 to go on the front our our reading binders

Mr. Orser, Sunset's new Literacy Specialist

Writing: right now we are writing about eco systems and we’re working on writing leads and taking out filler in writing.

Science: we’re talking about eco systems and we were doing a project with our table groups where we made up our own experiment.



Designing our experiments



Using our new Science Notebooks to take notes

Other:  we did our health test and Mrs. Marshall took us to her class and she taught us health.

Learning Update September 21st, 2012

 

We had a very art-infused week for math  as the students practiced drawing circles with compasses. The students created some “picture pie collages” made from whole, half, quarter, and eighths of circles. Check out a few great ones!

We wrapped up Unit 1 in math and spent the day working through a review, and the class is ready for the test on Monday.

We’re still working on building community (which never really ends) and created a Community Quilt! (A few students haven’t finished their squares yet, so I’ll post a picture next week when it’s done)

In writing we are working on the elements of a paragraph and have focused this week on main idea and supporting details.

The class totallly spoiled me for my birthday yesterday with gifts, cards, flowers, a song, and treats for the whole class. It made me feel so special, so THANK YOU!

 

The students finished their Health unit today and should be studying this weekend for the test on Tuesday. They should have taken home their Health books to study from.

 

Learning Update September 14th, 2012

 

We've had a busy second week of school!

 

For writing, the students wrote a letter to summer and designed a postcard. Students enjoyed seeing thier finished work displayed on the "Published Authors" board.

 

In math, we are reviewing properties of polygons and practicing our multiplication facts.

 

The class is working on building reading stamina, and we are up to 12 minutes so far. Over the next month, we will build that up to a full hour of silent reading time. During that time, some students will be working with Mrs. Shero in small guided reading groups, or individually practicing and building reading skills.

 

We also had a week long unit on Netiquette (internet etiquette and online saftety) this week, and the students are learning how to UYN (Use Your Netsmartz!) After the entire class passes the Netiquette exam with 100%, the students will get thier official "Online Access Cards" which will allow them to use the internet for research, schoolwork, and fun!