Our Kindness Theme Door Decorating Contest

Our Buckets are Full
with Warm Fuzzy Feelings! An arched banner with an over-flowing bucket connects our two classroom doors!

Flat Stanleys Have Been Arriving

It has been so exciting to receive so many emails and letters from Flat Stanley's travels. He has had lots of adventures that have been beautifully narrated by family and friends. We even had a poem written about his outing! He has gotten to see so many places. We will be looking closely at each adventure as we "travel" in our social studies units to each region of the United States. This is a year long project, so you are welcome to tell friends and family that have not sent Stanley that he can come back anytime. He is even welcome to have multiple excursions :). As we study each of Flat Stanley's adventures I will send all of the artifacts from his adventures home with the student who sent him. Thank you so much for supporting our project. I have loved this as much as the kids!

Unit 2 Realistic Fiction Writing a Success!

Students recently published their realistic fiction pieces and shared with students on the downstairs 4th grade team. It was a great opportunity for them to see their friends and receive/give positive feedback on their realistic fiction stories.

Renewable Resources: Science

Mrs. Regan Nickels, assistant superintendent, was invited and visited our classes on November 3. Mrs. Nickels started her presentation by "bringing us to the beach". 

Many students had misconceptions about when digging into the earth the temperature would get warmer, but Mrs. Nickels explained that just like when you dig in the sand on a warm day, it is actually cooler and that a certain depth, the earth experiences ambient temperatures. 

She shared her knowledge through diagrams and videos how geothermal energy works. We connected this to our own community;  one hundred and twenty five pipes were drilled 500 feet deep at Hampden Academy. That air is collected and cycled through heat pumps which help to keep the high school warm in winter and cool and comfortable during warmer weather.  

Thank you Mrs. Nickels for sharing in our learning experience!

Wax Museum

Our "Interpreting Characters" Unit ended with a wax museum celebration! Students were asked to dress as a character from their independent reading book and to share two traits with evidence to support their ideas. Classrooms from Weatherbee visited our wax museum on Friday, Nov. 3rd.  Proud posers were exceptional while our visitors voraciously read and learned about our characters and traits. You could have heard a pin drop in the hallways!

We apologize to parents for having to change dates at the last minute. It was a definitely a crazy week where flexibility was essential to our school survival.

Interpreting Characters Celebration

As a celebration of our Interpreting Characters unit, Team Rand House & Co., will be displaying a living character wax museum on October 31st from 2:30-2:50 pm.

During this time, our 4th graders will "be on display" as a character from a good fit book. Other classrooms have been invited to walk the upstairs hallway enjoying seeing students in costume as one of the characters from their book. 

Our goal is to have every 4th grader name two character traits and describe situations from the story as evidence to support those ideas. They have also been taught to use quotes from the book so we can show, not just tell, about our characters. 

Students have already began naming character traits and providing evidence. Offering guidance and feedback on this will be the topic of reading conferences this coming week. Students will be typing the information into their google accounts which they can access at home. 

It would be great if you could talk to your child about their project, get a sense of the character they are growing ideas about, and help them put together a simple costume about their character to be ready for October 31st. 

Winter Carnival Book Character Day 2016. Mrs. Whitehouse as Viola Swamp from Miss Nelson books. Mrs. Randall as Edward Tulane

First Writing Celebration

We have completed our first writing unit! The genre was personal narrative. Students shared their pieces with peers on Tuesday, Oct. 3rd.

I Pledge to be Responsible by...

NWEA Testing

Students will be taking the NWEA tests on Tuesday (9/12) and Wednesday (9/13) of next week. They will occur in the afternoon. 

First Week Highlights

• Getting to know our classroom libraries by having a genre scavenger hunt
• Generating safety ideas for school so no one gets physically or emotionally hurt
• Word Ladders
• Writing prompts
• Our favorite summer reads bulletin board

• Pledging to be responsible 4th graders
• "Wanted" posters for respectful teachers and classmates this year
• Learning circles with Mrs. Cyr
• "Filling" our invisible buckets and being acknowledged with "warm fuzzies"
• Picto graphing our birthdays with cupcakes

• Read alouds (Thunder Cake, Respect, Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing)
• Mrs. Randall's About Me Box
• Digital breakout.edu "Catch the Bus"
• Outdoor cooperative games: When the Warm Wind Blows, Hoop Game, Find your Match, Escape! (Quacker Birds)

Mrs. Randall and I are overwhelmed with the generosity of our Weatherbee families! We want to thank you for sending in all of these supplies for our classrooms!  :-)

2017-18 Welcome Letter and Supply List

2017-18 Welcome letter

Calling All Volunteers...

Field day at Weatherbee School is fast approaching! We are in need of volunteers to help out. The date is Thursday, June 8th. Please be in touch with one of us or Mr. Plaisted (he's coordinating the event). His email is aplaisted@rsu22.us

Thank you!

Wrapping up our Reading Units

Our final reading unit is a focus on historical fiction. Linking previous units (weather and poetry) I have been reading aloud a book called Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse. The historical time period is the Dust Bowl of the 1930s in Oklahoma. Students are feeling the raw emotion and tragedy the main character, Billie Jo Kelby experiences as she shares diary style poems.

Students are currently reading a variety of historical fiction in book clubs. They are setting their own reading assignments and reading then discussing the books together. Our target: to actively listen and share during historical book club meetings. I have been so impressed, while spectating their discussions as they are noticing, agreeing and politely disagreeing with each others thoughts and ideas, and even helping each other figure out what the author real means when having a character do or say something.

As a culminating activity, I hope to help each group create a "book trailer" about the book's characters, the time period their historical fiction novel took place, and the theme.

One student, as an independent reading project, was willing to create a model book trailer to use as a sample. I couldn't wait to share it! Just click on the link below :)

https://youtu.be/z7sqjhxWNdI

Mystery Skype

Have you heard your child talking about our Mystery Skype sessions? If not, be sure to ask them. This week each class skyped with another class somewhere in the United States. Students used google maps, atlases, and paper maps to help them locate where the mystery class was located. Students took turns asking questions to narrow down where the other class lived. Some examples: Do you border an ocean? Do you get snow? Are you near the Mississippi River? Do you live in the Southern part of our country?

We were able to figure out each state in every class and narrow it down to the closest city. My homeroom skyped with San Diego, California. Mrs. Randall's class got Austin, Texas and Mrs. Felice's class had Dunedin, Florida.

The kids had a blast! Someone from each homeroom told me they wished we could do this EVERY day in social studies😊

On March 1st we got together with Kindergartners at McGraw School and read our published informational pieces to them. They were a super audience! In return, they also shared their informational writing with us. The fourth graders enjoyed visiting their former school and teachers:-)