Week 8: Authors, Teachers and Actors...Oh My!

          We had a guest author visit the 4^th grade classes this week!  Miranda Paul has published nonfiction articles, poems, and children’s stories.  She was scheduled to speak at St. Mary’s College on September 22 - 24.  Thanks to Mrs. Ganzell, a parent of CPCS students, we were able to have Ms. Paul visit our classes and work with our students on Wednesday!  Ms. Paul is an inspiring speaker as well as an author.  She told the students about her experiences visiting and teaching in the Gambia.  She explained that learning about and respecting other cultures is a powerful way of enriching our own lives.  As a special treat, Ms. Paul read one of her own stories to the students.  Before leaving she talked about the key elements of a folk tale.  Then she gave the students the opportunity to start writing their own folk tales.  It was a very exciting morning.

As a means of connecting to Ms. Paul’s work, the students responded to a writing prompt about the value of books.  It was encouraging to see how well they recognize the many ways books impact our lives.  The students also worked on their skits about diversity.  They are learning that portraying the role of other characters and conveying the important ideas in a story takes careful planning and cooperation.

The students temporarily became teachers in social studies as they shared the information they had learned about a geographic region of Maryland.  We reviewed the special characteristics of each geographic region by taking notes on graphic organizers.  We connected what the students have learned about the physical characteristics of each region to what they are learning about erosion in science.  We saw that each region has some unique vulnerabilities to erosion.   We also played a game of Challenge in which students were able to score points by answering questions about Maryland’s geographic regions.  When we took the culminating quiz, most students were very pleased by how “easy” the test seemed.  This is to their credit as it reflects how well they’ve worked over the past two weeks!

In math, students discovered prime and composite numbers by looking for factors.  We used tiles, multiplication charts, hundred charts and even calculators to find all the factors fro numbers 1-100 and learned to draw factor rainbows.  We paired gestures with our new vocabulary in order to help us remember the meaning of prime and composite numbers.  Ask your child to show you and explain what the gestures mean.  Knowing the factors of numbers will help us with divisibility later on while helping us with multiplication right now!

In science, we continued to look at weathering and erosion.  After learning the difference between weathering (breaking down of earth's materials) and erosion (the carrying away of weathered materials), students turned their bodies into one or more of these processes by created tableauxs (similar to statues but moving is allowed) to represent these natural processes.  It was very clear that students understood the true meaning behind each of these words. Who knew science and drama could go hand in hand!?  Some students should really consider the dramatic arts!   Hopefully students will begin to apply their understanding of erosion and weathering  on our field trips this week!