Watershed Coming to Fourth Grade

 

The Watershed, a free program from USC Upstate is coming to the Wonder Lab at OES!  4th Graders will be going on... 

"An Incredible Journey"

Time: 45 minutes

Through the use of an engaging game from the Project Wet curriculum, students will be challenged to answer questions like...

“Where will the water you drink today, be tomorrow?” in their quest to understand the water cycle.

 

We will have fun learning science as we pretend to be water molecules moving from place to place on Tuesday. This will be a great review of our study of clouds and the water cycle as we get ready for our test this week.  Get ready to use your vocabulary words:

precipitation

condensation

runoff

evaporation

transpiration

stratus

cumulus

cirrus

 

 

Our new I-pads have changed our classroom immensely! Now that we  all finally got our Apple IDs, we are in the process of downloading apps that will help us in every subject area.  Each of our 4th grade teachers are busy finding the perfect ones to make their subjects charged with technology.  Although we have lots of time to discover things independently and at our own speed with

 

 

Apples at our fingertips, we also have "apples down" time where we work with partners and small groups to learn.  Here are a few pics of us working with a partner in a match-up game where we are trying to match conjunctions with their definitions...two brains are always better than one!  

 

 

  

Rocket Design and Native American Home Collaboration

The challenge: to design a paper rocket with a sheet of copy paper, scissors, and tape that will blast off and land further than anyone else's.

The manipulated variable is the length we decide to make the cylinder of the rocket.  Is longer better? 

Check out all three design teams!  Seems to be true!

We have finished studying 5 different regions where Native Americans settled.  We examined their climate, clothing, culture, and homes. After we planned what materials we would need, we brainstormed ideas on how to best use those materials to recreate their homes.  We quickly learned that collaboration takes patience, good communication skills, and a little give and take.  It wasn't enough to have a good idea, you had to convince others that it would work

 

 

 

 

 

 After two weeks of collaboration on these two projects there was one student who stood out.  Ayrianna earned the Captain of Character in Collaboration for her patience and ability to work well with just about anyone!  Congratulations, Ayrianna!

 

Oakland Open House Coming Soon!

Cooper and the 4th Grade would like to cordially invite you to our Open House on Tuesday, September 15th.  We would especially like you to see our Native American projects, our memoirs, Native American cloths and all of our Treasure Maps. 

 

Our rockets from our recent Rocket Launch will also be on display. Photos of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners will be revealed that evening. A special thank you to Kaydence's and Reese's dads who  came out to help. We had some last minute troubleshooting to adjust the width of the bottom of the rocket, so it would fit on the launch pad.

The manipulated variable was the length of the cylinder. We  had to predict what length might take our rocket the farthest. Mrs. Johnson recorded the data during the launch and we are finishing up our graphs on Monday.  Thank you to Mrs. Burns for planning our launch and Mr. Carroll for building our launch pad!  

Don't Laugh at Me!

 

We are continuing with our KINDNESS PBL as we take a look at an additional read-aloud beside WONDER. If you want to watch the video you can have a sneak peek...just click above.

 

 

 

Now that everyone has brought in just the right supplies for our various regions, we have made real progress on our Native American homes.  It is our favorite part of the day! The messier the better, right Brianna?

Austin prefers working separately from his mostly girl group. 

The girls are fine with that except now he has all the clay!

The more hands the better!

Cardboard?  I know what to do with that!

Raymond doesn't seem to mind his all girl group.