My Thoughts

      There are not too many ways to say how sorry we are for the tragedy in Newtown, CT.  I can't imagine the feelings of loss of the families whose children were at the school that day as we approach the holiday season.  Or the families of the staff members who went to school that day and........    While we will move on with our lives here in Putney and PCS, where do these families move on to?  How can I as a teacher ever try to explain to our class about an incident like this?  How shall we process this Monday morning.......How can we say we are "safe" at school?   We will do what we can.  I hope each of our families has tried to dicuss this to their children in some way already, and that as our class returns to our routines this week we remember how lucky we are, but also how fragile life is and that every day should be treated as special.  Everything we think is a "big" problem......is it really?  Does it even compare at all to that day? 
    So I can only say that we will try to move on as best we can, but hope we can help out in some way as well.  And that is what we shall talk about.  How can we help?

Thai Festival, and more...

Bailey and her kratong

4/5 students with kratongs and Thai apparel

Greetings, and how about some of these pictures!  We celebrated Loy Kratong, a Thai Festival the other week.  The students were able to wear traditional Thai clothing and demonstrated a Thai game during the assembly here at PCS.  They created models of kratongs to place on the "river" in the large room we met in.   Our Thai intern Kru Beau performed a dance as well.  It was a lot of fun!  In other news, the Holiday Bazaar was held this past Friday, and the Winter Concerts are this Wednesday and Thursday.  Also, this coming Friday is the Holiday Lunch.  Our 4/5B class and Ms. Saunder's G5 class will be eating at 11:15 or so......which is the earlier lunch.  This helps Kari in the kitchen get all the food put together for all the lunches.  She thanks us profusely!

Ms. Deb and the gang

The lovely Kru Beau in Traditional dress

Our own Maggie with her kratong

    Meanwhile, back in the classroom,  the 4/5 B students have been working on their new Study Groups during Lit Circle time.  We have divided up into 7 mixed groups of students from the 3-4-5 team classrooms.  For the next few weeks we are delving into the world of non-fiction text.  Each group is reading a book about the ecosystem/animal habitats theme.  We are using various strategies to collect important information.  The theme will close with an information poster scavenger hunt activity. 
      Technology and writing work have finally been connected as the 4/5B students now have Google Doc accounts to do their writing in.  We have just finished setting these up, and they should be available from home as well.   Their work is password protected and allows the students to access their writing from any computer.  
      Our Science unit on Biomes and Ecosystems is winding down now and the class is finishing up their final assessment project as I speak...oh, write....ok, type.  Theye were asked to create a poster of as much info as they could about plants and animals, climate and weather, adaptations, and overall description of 3 different biomes.  They are coming out very well. 
      Ms. Deb continues her unit on the Taino culture.  The students are learning more about the Taino lifestyle of the past and present, their language, and what life was like all these years after Columbus made his voyages to our end of the world.
      We are finishing up our third unit in 4th grade math, and will begin the next unit on 2Dimensional Geometry concepts.  Students will still need to practice their multiplication and division computation strategies and combinations as we continue through the year.
  
      Ok, I suspect that is a fair assessment of what we have been doing in the classroom.  Hope the weekend went well and see you all on Monday!
   
                                                       Mr. B and Ms. Deb
      

Happy Thanksgiving!

         Greetings and Happy Thanksgiving!  Of course it is now the day after the big T-Day, but the memory lives on, right?  So here we are smack dab in the middle of the holiday season.  Amazing to me to have already seen Christmas decorations even two weeks ago in some places.  Doesn't everyone know we have school to do?  Speaking of which,  hope your break is going well.  Here are a few things we have been doing in class. 
         We have completed our Lit Circles about finding conflict (like that is very hard anymore), the students did a fantastic job on their brief presentations, and we will be starting a new Lit Circle this week.  We are going to focus on non-fiction information and ideas.  More to come on that this week coming up. 
         We have been working on spelling two times a week using the Spellography series as our guide.  Students will be working with word patterns and reviewing many different spellings of the many sounds we use in our language over the course of this year.  While we will not have weekly spelling tests, there will be written check-ins along the way for the different spelling patterns.  We have been writing about Our Special Place in Writing class, and the students have been doing very well regarding this topic.  I have also set up Google Accounts specific to our school for their writing to be filed.  They will be able to access this from any computer in the school with their username and password. 
          The Fourth Grade Mathematicians has been working on multiplication and division using multiple towers.  We are working with multiples of tens to increase our efficiency of multiplying and dividing.  I hope to move this unit along as some of the concepts are similar to our first unit this year and build on these.   One thing that is very important is for your child to continue to work on their multiplication combinations fluency.  This remains very important!  Also, please check in with Karen for information on the 5th Grade Mathematicians. 

          Social Studies class continues to include Thai culture and activities, mapping and civilization studies, and soon we will be doing a unit on an indigenous people, the Taino.

   Our studies in Science will begin to wrap up the Biomes and Ecosystems unit.  Students have been busy exploring the differences between the different biomes that we are covering, working in cooperative groups and preparing posters and information charts with their assigned biomes. We also had our Four Winds program last week.  Some fun times with cones and the Fibbonacci principle.  Check out some of the pictures!

          So, that probably is a good overview of our work over the last two weeks or so. As always, it is a pleasure to work with your children and I enjoyed the conference times we have had.  Still a fe more to get in there as well.  

Thanks from us,  Mr. B and Ms Deb.

Greetings from 4/5 B again!
      At the present time, we are currently in between Halloween and Thanksgiving break.  We are also ending our first Literature Circle this coming Tuesday.  As I may have mentioned in a previous post, our Lit Circle focused on "conflict" in the main character or "protagonist".  As the students read their assigned pages, they looked for examples of conflicts in their chosen books.  We then discussed these and other topics in our small groups during the 3 weeks we did this.  The final project is to do a "Reader's Theater" in which the students read selections from their stories to all the lit circle group.  Their selections, in this case, illustrate the conflicts seen in those particular selections.
     Our Writing sessions these past two weeks have been about "special places".  We started with choosing a special place that means something to the students, then choose three "special moments" that occurred in that special place.  From there each student has to create an idea map which allows them to organize all the pieces they remember about that moment.  They will then start the actual writing process involving sentences, paragraphing, and proofreading.  We continue with these pieces next week.  We are also working on basic spelling patterns twice a week in groupings according to what needs to be learned.
     4th grade math class has completed the Data Unit, did the final unit assessment, and will move into Unit 3:  Multiplication and Division 2.  We will investigate methods beyond the typical algorithm for double digit multiplication and division.  Lots of interesting math computation in the unit.  5th grade math has also been involved in a unit on multiplication and division, as well as geometry and volume.
     Science classes about biomes and ecosystems continue this week.  The students have been working on biome mapping on large poster paper.  Each group had a biome to investigate by first reading an information sheet,  and then creating a content map about their biome.  Each group created 5 questions about their biomes that all the others will have to complete as well.
      Social Studies has been split between Kru Beau's lessons about Thailand, and Ms. Deb's mapping and Columbus activities.  Kru Beau has taught us Thai numbers, writing our names in Thai, and many other interesting things about her homeland.  (Check out the cool picture at the top of this post!)  Ms. Deb has taught us about mapping the world, and language areas in the Western Hemisphere that were specific to the early explorers.  The students are currently completing map outlines showing where the many countries of the America's are located, and what the predominant languages are and why.
      So hopefully you have all received a conference notice as we are right in the middle of them.  I have a few more to schedule so I'm sure you will not be missed. 

             See you soon!     Mr. B and Ms. Deb

Halloween Week!

Boo!  As we begin the new week, we leave behind a week of many different learning activities with more to come in the weeks ahead. 

This week first: 
      We are having our Halloween Get-Together this Wednesday from 2:00-2:35.  The students are able to wear or bring a costume to school, but leave behind the swords, toy guns or other types of attachments that may be forgotten here at school that day.  We will have the annual 4-5B Swinging Donut Activity, music (any Halloween music cd's out there?), cider, and assorted "healthy" snacks as well.  Anyone want to make a set of cupcakes?  Some chips, even some cups and plates would be great. 
We should be having our Four Winds volunteer doing a session this coming Tuesday (I do not think the weather will affect this...).    So now back to the previous week.

     This last week we started a three week Literature Circle with 5S.  We started off with both classes meeting together in Karen Saunder's room.  Karen and I presented the overview of the lit circle, read a short picture book and demonstrated how a student would respond as if they were in a lit circle.  The big topic is "conflict", and we are learning about the different ways it shows up in a typical story.  Students read assigned pages each night from the book they are using in the group, complete a reading log to share with their group members, and we have discussions and conversations about the story, the conflicts, and questions or comments the students wrote down in their journals.  The Lit Circle will end with a reader's theater presentation by each book group.
     Our 4th grade math class continues on with the Data unit.  They completed a mid-unit assessment this week, and they are working on how to develop a survey, collect data, and represent data.  This will be going on this week as well, but we will also be working on more concepts in the unit.
     Ms. Deb continued her social studies sessions this week with activities on placing the continents in the right places, why maps from the past look different from the present, and the differences between Mercatur maps and the Peterson projections.  Ask your child if they remember...  We also had Kru Beau come in to teach us more about Thailand.  This week:  the Elephant song!  She will be joining us twice a week starting next week.
     This past week in Science we continued our biomes/ecosystems studies.  We focused on learning how to review a scientific article on the Arctic Tundra and pick out details needed to make a concept map.  When that was done, we watched an online video created by a student group which allowed us to see what that environment is really like!  This week coming up we will be working in small groups to create concept maps of a few more biomes.
    We are also working on overall classroom responsibilities.  Things like cleaning up after yourself, hanging clothing up, following the classroom skills (raising hand , being an attentive student, etc.), and just being a community in the classroom. More practice needed, but check in with your child and ask them what kind of student are they at school? 
     So, watch out for the weather, wear your galoshes, and hope the week goes well for us all.
                                                                          Mr. B and Ms. Deb



     

   

Classroom News

Ms. Ames and 4/5 B on the hillside during School Forest Day

    Greetings!  I decided to put a few weeks of information into this newsletter.   Here are a few things we are doing or have done these last two weeks in class.  Last Tuesday we went up to Landmark to see the Mongolian Performers.  Quite exciting and fun, and a good healthy walk as well.  We also had School Forest Day on Wednesday with lots of stories, music, and walking in the school forest.  A fine day with cool temperatures and sunshine! 
    This week we are starting Literature Circles with 4/5 B and 5S.  Ms. Saunders and I will be setting the students up with book choices and going over the theme of the Lit Circle which is going to be conflict.  We will be meeting for the next 3 weeks in small groups made up of students from both classes.   A different Lit Circle “guide” will lead each group which depends on which book the students actually read. 
    Our most recent Writing has involved the Trumpet Swan story.  The 4/5 B students had to change a part in the story so that the characters had to make other choices, but still end up at the original ending.  We are reviewing those this week.  We also continue to do five minute writes each week.  We have been using the computers when available to write some original stories as well.
    Our latest Math unit has been the Data Unit.  We have been learning to work with line plots and bar graphs, looking at describing the data and creating statements about the data.  The next part of the unit will have the students creating their own surveys and recording the results of  what they find out.
    Ms. Deb did a few lessons on Columbus and the effect of his travels on the Taino people.  She will be working with the students on mapping and map information for the next few sessions. 
    The work in Ecosystems for our Science class will continue for the next few weeks.  We will be learning about many different biomes and ecosystems.  We explored major biomes across the world using an interactive web site.  We have also listened to an ecosystem song with many key words in it created by a classroom in another state.  This week we start to learn more about the major biomes from readings and internet sites.

    Okay, that’s pretty much where we are at right now.  Until the next time!

                    Mr. B and Ms. Deb

Our own Nick and Maggie join Dan is singing a song during School Forest Day

Post-NECAPS

Yay, we made it through the NECAPs...well, the 4th graders have.  The 5th graders will have their final Writing NECAP tests on Tuesday:  one in the morning and one in the afternoon.   We will have a regular day for the 4th graders including their two specials.   We celebrated a Putney Pride assembly on Friday morning, and our class handed in 212 Paws cards!  We are almost at out next class milestone of 250 which gets the class a nice treat of some kind. Then after the assembly was a bus drill.  We actually had a math class that morning and started our new Data unit.  We are investigating the number of raisins in a 1.5 oz box of raisins.  We will get into interpreting data as well as presenting it in different ways.
The 5th graders were able to attend a Technicool presentation after math class, which left the 4th graders in the room with Ms. Deb and I.  We decided to work on some spelling cards for a while, but then did an online activity together called Wacky Tales.  It was a Mad Libs activity in which we learned about parts of speech and created a story by filling in the blanks with special words.  We got a kick out of doing it and lots of laughs as well.  In the afternoon Kru Beau (Thai Intern) presented a lesson on Thailand.  I had to leave in the afternoon so cannot give the details now.  Maybe ask your kids...see what they remember?
In a few weeks, on October 16, we will be heading up to Landmark College again.  This time we are going to see a free performance by Mongolian Dancers.  It should be quite exciting! It will be about the same time a s last time, so will probably get bag lunches before we head up.

Well, seeing as most of our week was testing, I guess I have not so much to say.  So, let's see how this next week shapes up...Oh yea, School Forest Day should be Monday afternoon...weather permitting?