St. Augustine Highlights

Enjoy the show! Leave a comment by sharing your favorite part of the trolley tour and your favorite part of the tour of the fort (Castillo de San Marcos).

Love,
Mrs. Phillips

Readers to Leaders!

It is our intention that every fourth grade child read 1,000,000 words this school year. To do this your child should read for at least 20 minutes each night. The books or book equivalents that he reads MUST be within his independent reading range. Your child must read from a variety of authors and various genres.



First Nine Weeks: If your child logged at least 5 chapter books by the end of the first nine weeks, he earned recognition at our Student Recognition Ceremony. All readers participated in our Super Slime Reading “Slip”off. Students meeting their goal participated in a popcorn party.

Goal 2: If your child has logged a total of 10 chapter books by the end of the second nine weeks, he will be recognized at our Student Recognition Ceremony and awarded participation in our Book BINGO Bonanza.

Goal 3: If your child has logged a total of 15 chapter books by the third nine weeks, he will be recognized at our Student Recognition Ceremony and be awarded participation in our Kiss a Pig Picnic with the Principal.

Goal 4: If your child has logged a total of 25 chapter books by the end of the year (teacher read books count as 5), he will be recognized at our Student Recognition Ceremony and if our entire student population has met their reading goals the Principal will spend lunch as a Duct Tape Reading Diva.

Happy reading! How many books do you have on the chart? Will we being seeing YOU at the the Book Bingo Bonanza??

Conservation of Mass Lab

During science, our class has studied various physical properties of matter. One of our labs focused on measuring mass and students used a pan balance to find the mass of several objects including a linking cube which has a mass of 3.6 grams.

Another lab was designed to give students some experience in measuring volume using both a ruler and displacement (water in a graduated cylinder). Students found that the volume of a linking cube is 5 cubic cm.

During math, our work has been with fractions, decimals, and percents. Students have worked on reading all the representations correctly, equating all three, and determining the amounts based on visual and actual models.

As a culminating activity, students were asked to build a structure using exactly 50 linking cubes. Many of these completed structures are shown in the above slideshow. After creating a 50 cube structure, the mass of the completed structure was determined and compared to the original mass of 50 individual cubes. Each student also found the fraction, decimal, and percent equivalents for each color used in their structure. Through this experience, the students learned that the mass of 50 individual linking cubes is the same as the mass of all 50 cubes connected together in an arrangement- supporting the Law of the Conservation of Mass. This law, also known as principle of mass/matter conservation, is that the mass of a closed system (in the sense of a completely isolated system) will remain constant over time. Mass cannot be created or destroyed, although it may be rearranged in space, and changed into different types of particles (or in this case, designs). The students really enjoyed themselves as they participated in this particular learning experience.

Happy Sciencing and Mathematizing,
Mr. Pinchot and Mrs. Phillips

"It Was Just A Little White Table..."

VETERANS DAY
November 11th

Veterans Day is a day set aside to honor and thank all men and women who are serving or have served in military, whether during war time or during a time of peace. We tell them how much we appreciate that they served so that we can continue to live with freedoms few other countries have.

To honor this day and teach our students about Veterans Day, I read America’s White Table and reenacted the setting of the table to all 88 students in the 4-Corners.


America’s White Table
By Margot Theis Raven
Illustrated by Mike Benny

Margot Theis Raven’s prose tell the story of a fictional 10-year-old girl, Katie, whose uncle is coming for dinner on Veteran’s Day. Katie’s mother explains the importance of the ceremonial table, and its special significance to Uncle John. He served in Vietnam and lost his friend, Mike, there after the two were taken as prisoners of war (POW’s). Uncle John and his friend eventually gained their freedom; but Mike’s injuries were too severe and he didn’t survive. Katie puts the story in book format as a promise to Uncle Mike and others that she will never forget the gift of freedom that veterans have given her.
To emphasize "It was just a little white table..." The author uses this phrase at the beginning of almost every page in the story.

Here are some excerpts from the story and the scene that was reenacted:

“We use a small table, girls,” she explained first, “to show one soldier’s lonely battle against many. We cover it with a white cloth to honor a soldier’s pure heart when he answers his country’s call to duty.
We place a lemon slice and grains of salt on a plate to show a captive soldier’s bitter fate and the tears of families waiting for loved ones to return,” she continued.
We push an empty chair to the table for the missing soldiers who are not here.”




"But I didn't know what I -- a ten-year-old-girl -- could ever put on the table that was as important as each veteran's gift of freedom to me."


"And that's when I knew what I could put on the table:
My promise to put the words from my heart into a little book
about America's White Table."


"Remember us, please....
we are real people like your Uncle John and Mike
who left families and friends, homes and dreams of our own
to protect your birthright of liberty from disappearing
as easily as sunlight from a glass."

My hope is that all of our students will “remember” the significance of Veterans Day and will look at this day of honor differently than they ever did before. Please ask them what they learned by experiencing this great piece of literature and from our in-depth sharing and discussion.

Can you name all five branches of the United States Military?
All these different branches help keep us safe and protect our freedoms every day. During times of war, they help defend. During times of peace, they help keep the peace. During times of trouble (like earthquakes, famines, etc), they provide help to the people of the area affected.

Cultivating Reading Skills on the Computer!

This year the county has supplied us with several different websites that students can go to from home to enhance their learning.

1.Compass Odyssey:

https://odyssey.duvalschools.org/childu/index.html?SSL=1

This is a wonderful web based learning program that motivates today’s students to engage, think & learn. The lessons are creative and will keep students interested and receptive to learning. The best part about this program is that teachers can assign individual lessons depending on what each student needs. After a student finishes a lesson, the teacher can view the work that they have done. The students also have immediate access to the progress report that is located in the "backpack" icon. Log-in and Passwords are the same ones they use to log in to the school computers and can be found in their planners.


2. Destination Sucess:

https://success.duvalschools.org/

Destination Success contains and entire collection of software for Reading and Math. To access the collection, once logged in, you have to click the Explorer link in the upper left corner of the screen. That will open a screen you can scroll down with different software selections. The software range from Kindergarten to the 12th grade. Therefore, an explore map is needed to find the content you want your child to work on. Teachers can also assign different assignments to the students based on individual needs.Log-in and Passwords are the same ones they use to log in to the school computers and can be found in their planners.


3. FCAT explorer

http://www.fcatexplorer.com/

Practice Makes Progress! That’s why the Florida Department of Education built FCAT Explorer—to provide practice for helping your child make real progress on the skills needed in the classroom, on the FCAT, and in life.

FUN, EFFECTIVE, AND FREE: FCAT Explorer is a set of free, Web-based practice programs. The content is built from the Sunshine State Standards that are tested on the FCAT. Kids can practice by themselves because the programs give them corrective feedback and learning guidance. Log-in and Password located in the planner.

Behavior Buck Challenge:

Here is your chance to give your teacher some feedback about these websites. Try each one out this week. Then come back and leave a comment. List the website in order of most favorite to least favorite (1 being your most favorite and 3 being your least favorite). Tell what skill you worked on at each site and what you liked and didn't like about it .

For Example:

1. FCAT Explorer: I worked on comparing and contrasting. I liked that it felt like I was playing a video game while I was learning. I didn't like that it took a long time to load in between each game.

You will earn 30 behavior bucks for doing this challenge. Happy Learning! I can't wait to hear back about what you think!

Grouping Fractions According to Landmarks

After creating 40 fraction cards in class, we organized them into groups based on connections we made about them after analyzing relationships between numerators and their denominators. By doing this, we were able to make many generalizations about fractions.

#1- Fractions that have "0" as a numerator equal 0. (Zero parts are named, or shaded.)

#2- Fractions that have a numerator which is exactly one-half of its denominator equal 1/2. 2 is half of 4, so 2/4 = 1/2.

We also added to this observation by saying that since the numerator is half the denominator, IF WE DOUBLE THE NUMERATOR IT WILL EQUAL THE DENOMINATOR.

#3- Fractions that have a numerator equal to its denominator equal 1 whole. If 8 out of 8 parts are shaded, the whole is shaded, therefore, 8/8 = 1 whole.
Those first three groupings were easy to make, as you can imagine. When placing fractions BETWEEN LANDMARKS, though, our generalizations became more advanced!

Here we have two fractions that fall BETWEEN 0 and 1/2. In this case, the numerators are "less than half" of the denominators BUT "greater than zero".

For example, with 2/6, half of 6 is 3, but fewer than 3 parts (only 2) are shaded; therefore, the fraction is LESS than 1/2.

Here we have three fractions that fall BETWEEN 1/2 and 1 whole. In this case, the numerators are "more than half" but "less than equal to" to denominator.

For example, half of 8 is 4, therefor 4/8 = 1/2.

If I have the fraction 5/8, since 5 is more than 4 (half the denominator), then the fraction is greater than 1/2.

We are now beginning to explore decimal and percent equivalents for fractions in class- new, powerful strategies to add to our tool belts when we compare fractions! Math is FUN when there are multiple ways to solve problems and justify our reasonings!

What do you think about fractions, decimals, and percents? Leave a comment!

Love,

Mrs. Phillips

Hallway Exhibit

A Hallway Exhibit of Our Students’ Lives

Take a stroll down the hall of The 4-Corners Team, and you will find hanging 87 beautiful essays that the students wrote about themselves. Remember those three items that students brought to class in a paper bag that represented them in some way? Our students have been working diligently for several weeks on an elaborated and detailed five paragraph essay that depicts their lives. First, students shared their three items with the class, so we could get to know each other better. They told us why these items are important to them and what each represented. Then they got to work crafting their essays, spending weeks revising, editing, and finally publishing. Just today, they added their final touch by illustrating their head and body and attaching the head to the top of their writing and the body to the bottom of their writing. They composed truly interesting and engaging essays. See what I mean by the following few examples. Please leave us a comment and give us your feedback. Students write for an audience, and you are part of their audience!