The Einsteins of Math

The title of this post came from one of the students' comments today during Math. It was: "Mrs. Hankins, you are making us the Einsteins of Math"!!! I love comments like that and yes they sure felt like it today. We did so much math in an hour lesson today, it was amazing. We did computation, geometry, number sense, graphing, and algebra all in one lesson. Amazing-and the great thing was-the fact that they all were grasping the concepts and understanding and feeling confident. See why I LOVE my job!! Today in Social Studies, we started the tour of the Northeast. Ask your child what mountains are the backbone of the NE and what kind of government we have and if they can answer that, write NE in the planner. We went over the states and capitals and not many of the kids knew too many so make sure you start studying. You know how time flies and the test will be here before you know it. I will quiz them orally on them each day and my hope is that more and more students know more of them daily. If your child is singing a fun water cycle song tonight, it is because we started the water cycle. They love the song and it is one of those you can't get out of your head. Anyway, if you want to hear it and sing along, it is on the side of my blog under favorite links. Tomorrow is Library so get those books returned. My reading kids took their unit 1 assessments today for the new reading series and they weren't too bad for the first try at it. This program is new for all of us. Now we are going to finish "There's A Boy in the Girls' Bathroom" before we move on. Great posters for our bake sale. WOW-I love the creativity!! Thank you to those that got them done last night. For those of you that didn't, they are due tomorrow. Have yours here so you can go and hang one up around the school. Great news for our NILE field trip. Everyone, but one student, was able to buy in for $500. Have a great night.

Lots Came Home Tonight!

Wowzers!! Lots of new stuff came home today. First of all, students brought home their laminated practice maps for learning the states & capitals in all 5 of the regions. To go with that, they have a map of just the Northeast with all 11 states and capitals. Today we finished the Geography Challenge for that region so tomorrow we will start the tour which means we will be ready for our test over the NE states and capitals on October 26th. Remember they don't have to know how to spell them as they will have a word bank to choose from, but they need to know the location and of course the state and its' capital. The orange paper that came home is to make a poster for our 4th Grade Bake Sale on October 31st. They wrote in the planner what needs to be on the poster. $100 will be given to students who make a neat, creative, 4th grade quality poster and then they will hang them up in the hallways at school on Wednesday. Also Math homework tonight for everyone. It is a continuous review of skills we have already worked on but that is why it is homework as that is practice. We will continue with algebraic expressions tomorrow. Today in Montana History, we learned about the importance of Montana's rivers and mountains. They had to locate them on a map of Montana. Ask your child 3 reasons why the rivers are important and write them in the planner for free money. My reading kids will be finishing up Unit 1 in reading with their assessment tomorrow and then we will move into Unit 3. Reminder: NILE field trip is on Tuesday, October 16th from 11:30-2:00. More on that later. I will be sending home an informational sheet early next week about all the upcoming Drug Free Week activities/field trips. Have a great night.

The Week Ahead

Hope you are enjoying your weekend. Sure was a surprise waking up to snow on the ground this morning. Yikes-it is too early for that. Glad it melted today. This is going to be another busy week. In reading, we finished Unit 1 on heritage so will test out of unit 1 and start on Unit 3. I am moving to Unit 3 because the stories go right along with the Northeast which is the region we are studying in Social Studies. I will be sending home 2 practice maps on Monday for your child to start studying the NE states and capitals. They not only have to know them, but the location as well. Also in reading this week, we are going to try and finish up our read-a-loud of "There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom". We will be taking an adventure into the opposite gender bathrooms and then doing a Venn Diagram to compare/contrast the two. This is always quite a fun adventure for them to see what the other bathroom is like. In Math, we are continuing with algebraic equations. We did a quick assessment practice of multiplication with multiplication wheels on Friday and I noticed that some of the students have forgotten some of their multiplication facts. It is going to be very important that they take some time on a nightly basis to practice them as we will be going into multiplying 2 & 3 digit numbers x 1 digit and 2 digit x 2 digit numbers and if they struggle with their fact memorization, this will be a difficult concept for them to master. So please take some time nightly to practice those for success here at school on the higher level concepts. In Science, we finished wildfires on Friday and will continue our weather unit by studying and doing a fun project to learn the water cycle. We have a fun song and a cool writing activity to go with it. The writing activity is going to be a homework project done in 4 parts and I will need your help editing your child's writing as it is nearly impossible for me to edit 22 of them for 4 days. There is also a fun art project that goes with it and these will be done at home also. The reason for that is because I find that we get the best creativity that way and they don't all look the same as they would if done here at school. More on this project as it is assigned. I will be sending home some construction paper on Monday for your child to make a poster for our bake sale that will be on Wednesday, October 31st. I hope you will be able to help us out by baking some treats. Thank you. As you can see from the picture that Emily is our student of the week. We loved hearing all about her and we now know that her favorite subject is Montana History and that she hopes to be a volleyball & soccer coach someday. Thank you for sharing, Emily. We didn't do a team building activity this week, but instead used the time to finish our wildfire unit by doing a fun partner activity. They got to work together and practice the trait of cooperation. Have a great rest of the weekend.

Halloween Bake Sale

As you know, the 4th grade loves to take field trips as an extension of our learning here in the classroom and in order to do that we need to raise money so we are having a bake sale on October 31st. It is an early out dismissal day because of Parent-Teacher Conferences so we will having it at 12:00. We will have some students set up on the primary side and some set up on the intermediate side to help sell. We will have a parent volunteer at each station too. So if you could please help us that would be great. We are looking for any kinds of baked goods like: cookies, cupcakes, healthy snacks, or any other fun thing you can think of. Having them be the Halloween theme would be fun as kids love that. We are selling them for 50 cents/piece. I know this is way early, but I wanted to give you enough time to start planning. I will be sending construction paper home tomorrow for them to each make a sign to put up in the hallway. In fact, that will be their weekend homework. Thank you for you help in this. Today in Social Studies, they had fun working in groups of 3 on a Geography Challenge. It was about population, precipitation, the regions, and elevation. Ask your child which region in the US has the highest overall elevation. Write that region in the planner for extra money. Everyone has homework tonight. It is on writing number expressions. We didn't have extra time to work on it so I sent it home. Have a great night

Quick Post Today

I have a staff meeting so I am going to make this a quick post. Good day in Room 6 again today with pretty much a normal routine. Stayed in for lunch recess and the kids did a great job playing board games. They loved it and we sure enjoyed the rain. Oh it smells so clean & fresh! Make sure you dress for the weather again tomorrow and I am sure we will be out as I think the rain has stopped. Now that all our character warrior shields are done, ask your child about the 4 cornerstones and the center of our character shields if they can tell you all 5 parts, write character in the planner for free money. They sure do look awesome in the hallway. I will post a picture of them tomorrow for you to see. In Science, we continued talking about wildfires & prescribed fires, good & bad fires, and today we learned about ways to protect your home from fires. If your child can tell you one way, write home safety in the planner. We will continue more on that tomorrow. As you can see, not a lot of exciting happenings. We just continue to work hard. Have a great night. Cya in the morning.

Good Day today in Room 6, but not a lot new to report. We started our Social Studies with our first geography challenge. We did it whole group even though they could have done it alone, but I wanted to model the correct way as they are going to be doing lots of these throughout the year. It was reviewing latitude and longitude and I was so excited to see they retained that concept. YIPPEE! The next challenge will be done with a partner. In Science, we started our mini unit on wildfires. Ask your child what the fire triangle consists of. Hint: It is the 3 things a fire needs to burn. If they can do it, make the triangle in the planner. New reading calendars went home today for October. If you didn't return Septembers yet, please do so tomorrow for credit. This is a big part of their grade. Students ran the 800 today and did a great job. In fact, they got a compliment from the PE teacher that they did it the best of all his groups so far. Way to go Team Hankins!! Tomorrow is Library day. Let's have 100% return of our books. It looks like the weather is going to turn quite a bit cooler tomorrow. So dress for the weather and bring a jacket. Have a great night.

Happy Monday!

Thank you for getting those character shields to school all covered and ready to go. They are turning out so fun as you will see the final products displayed in the hall. But, most importantly is what they say and the choices they are making to use these cornerstones/pillars of good character. They did put a lot of thought into them. Speaking of character, Mrs. Neese, the counselor, has introduced the purple hand cookie to our school this year. It goes with the purple hand pledge that the kids say every morning before they entered the building. Ask your child to say it to you, and write purple hand pledge in the planner. Each month, we have to choose a student from our classes that displays the use of that pledge. This month our winner was Jazmyn Kronewitter. She was nominated by her peers for helping others with organization, picking up people's art tub contents when they spill, playing with the new student, etc. Others were nominated also and those random acts of kindness were also stated. We put names on the board of the nominees and then students voted for whom they thought was most deserving. We had a good discussion about it and made sure that it was not a popularity thing. This is going to be a monthly activity so there are many more chances to be the recipient. I was so excited to see so many nominated and hear the reasons why because as their classroom teacher, I am not with them in every school setting. I am so proud of this group of kids. We started our section on estimation in math and the kids are loving it because we are using rounding to estimate and they already got it so we will cruise into over & under estimates, and then our algebraic equations. Tomorrow, we are starting our map skills to move us into the Northeast section of the U.S. Students will have to know the states and capitals of this region and I will be sending a map home soon for them to use as a study tool. I also posted them over on the side of the blog to start practicing now if you wish. They not only have to know them, but have to locate them also. In spelling this week for the kids in my spelling, the unit is on homophones and using them correctly so on the test Friday I will say the word and use it in a sentence, and they have to choose the correct one and write it. So not only practice spellings, but meanings and using in context this week. PTA fundraiser envelopes came home today. Read through the info inside and if any questions, please ask and if I can't answer I will direct your concern to one of the board members. Those of you that went to Saturday Live had fun I'm sure and thank you for supporting our PTA & school. Have a great night.