D.E.A.R.

D.E.A.R. stands for Drop Everything And Read! This week is Read-Across-America Week in honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday. Our school is doing many things to celebrate, including D.E.A.R. time every day when the whole school drops everything and just READS! Here are some pictures of us enjoying our 20 minutes of simply reading. :)

How do area and perimeter change?

We have recently been investigating area and perimeter. We know that perimeter is found when we "ADD ALL SIDES" and area is found when we "COVER UP" or find the "SPACE INSIDE."  Last week we investigated what happened when we took a rectangle or triangle, cut it into two pieces, and rearranged them to form a new shape. What happened to the perimeter? What happened to the area? Here are our answers!

Teaching Theme

We have recently been learning about finding the theme of a text. The theme is the THE MEssage for your life and oftentimes the author writes about a main character that learns a lesson in order to teach the readers that same lesson as well. Patricia Polacco's books are some of the best examples of texts with themes. On Friday, we read "The Bee Tree" and found the theme after identifying characters, setting, plot events, problem, and solution. We recorded our learning using a "somebody wanted but so then" summary that includes the theme/moral at the end.

We just put up a "common themes of literature" poster to help us as we read. 

Rubik's Cube Tournament!

Today our school Rubik's Cube team competed in the state tournament! I thought I would just go check it out for an hour or so but I ended up staying all day because it was so exciting! Our team won FOURTH PLACE in our division! I am so proud of these awesome kids! And I'm so glad I got to spend the day with them at ASU West. They are so in love with "college life." Mission accomplished!

On a side note - Miss Barber officially solved the Rubik's Cube by herself today!!!!!

Guess My Rule

"Guess My Rule" came from the Rodel Foundation. To play I put a secret algebraic rule (expression) under the Guess My Rule machine. Then we put a number into the machine and see what comes out. We record our input and output on a chart. Students then get to guess the rule. If someone writes a rule that you agree with, you can put a check mark next to the rule.

In this example, we put in a 1 and got a 3. So our rule could be "divide the input by 1, then add 2" because 1 divided by 1 plus 2 equals 3. Or our rule could be "add 2" since 1 plus 2 is 3. 

Then we put another number into the machine. We check our first guesses. If they don't work for both sets of input/output numbers, we erase them and guess again. 

When we put in a 2, we got an 8. That means that our first guess of "divide by 1, add 2" doesn't work because 2 divided by 1 plus 2 equals 4, not 8. Our second guess doesn't work either because 2 plus 2 is 4. So we erased both guesses and guessed again. 

 We continue putting numbers into the machine until we find a rule that works for all our inputs and outputs. 

In this example, our guess of "multiply by 5, subtract 2" works for all three number pairs. 

Finally we check our rule by moving the machine to see the rule underneath!

The Water Cycle

Our newest science unit is studying Earth's Water!

Listen to this video and see if you can summarize the steps of the water cycle.
Get the lyrics here!

Arizona's 100th Birthday!

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

And most importantly...

Happy 100th Birthday Arizona!!!

Today we celebrated by having a big birthday party with the 4th graders. 

We had cake, sang "Happy Birthday," and signed a "We Love AZ" banner with reasons we are thankful that we live in Arizona. What a blast! This was an awesome year to be a fourth grader in Arizona!