Cultue Projects

Last week we culminated our first IB unit of study that focused on cultures of the world.  Each student presented a project about a culture and brought in something from that culture to share with us.

We had a ton of food!!  We enjoyed ice cream, spaghetti, pizza, inside-out pancakes, queso, jelly rolls, honey flatbread, potato candy, scalloped potatoes, and much, much more.  

 Alex dressed as someone from the Mayan culture.

 Ethan constructed a piece of Mayan architecture.

 Aliyah dressed as someone from India.

 Smith dressed as someone from Ghana.

 Kate dressed as a soccer player because soccer is an important part of the culture in Ghana.

Birmingham Museum of Art

Today we took a field trip to The Birmingham Museum of Art.  This trip provided the students with a wonderful learning experience that went along wonderfully with our prehistoric indian and culture units.  The students followed the Moccasin Trail in the museum and saw a lot of Indian artifacts.  Once we completed our Native American tour we then took a self-guided tour and saw pieces from Africa, India, China, Japan, and Korea.  Ask your child about something he/she learned.
We were not allowed to have cameras inside the museum, so I had to snap a few pictures during lunch.

Culture Project Research

We finally got a chance to go to the computer lab to work on our culture projects.  We practiced creating a Power Point slide and inserting pictures from files into the slide.  The students also got a chance to do a little researching AND they FINALLY go to use their flash drives.  They were sooooo excited!!!

Culture Projects

Culture projects were introduced yesterday.  Because this is our first project to complete in the 4th grade, I would like to have them completed at school.  I want to be able to monitor each student's researching skills and project progress to make sure it is done correctly so that once they are working independently they will know exactly what is expected of them.

Yesterday students chose countries/cultures they were interested in learning more about.  They were paired up based on their interest in a country/culture.  Culture project guidelines and instructions can be found on our classroom website www.dcs.edu/webpages/lupton.  You will need to click on the IB page and then click the "Expressions" subpage.

Today I presented a finished project to the class so they could see what their final product should look like and what their oral presentation should look and sound like.

Tuesday and Wednesday Catch-Up

Culture Brainstorm

On Tuesday we began a class brainstorm list about culture.  Each student told me what they know about culture and they even added the different ways people can express themselves to our list.  We got a lot of great responses and a great jump start to our first IB unit.  My main question to the class during our brainstorm was, "Are cultures and countries the same thing?"  Ask your child what they think about that question!

Reading Goals

As we began reading workshop on Tuesday afternoon we took some time to set 2 goals for ourselves as readers.  The goals could be for improvement in comprehension, accuracy, or responsibility, and a goal could also be about what type(s) of books/genres they may wish to try.  Ask your child what his or her current reading goals are and how they plan to achieve them.

Spelling Menu!

On Tuesday we also learned what our spelling menu item choices are.  Here is a list of menu choices in case you need to reference them at some point.  They are also listed on the classroom website.  www.dcs.edu/webpages/lupton

Writer's Workshop
Getting an Idea

During writer's workshop we have a mini-lesson that focuses on a new skill and then we spend about 30 minutes practicing that new skill.  We keep all of our notes from mini-lessons in our writer's notebooks and then we have our writing sample behind our mini-lesson notes.  Today's skill was 'Getting an Idea'.  Good writer's need to know how to come up with an idea for writing so today we spent a little time getting a jump-start on a list of ideas.  We began brainstorming topics we could write about and came up with quite a nice list!

This is a picture of student's writing using their new list of ideas.  Today they were able to choose their own topic to write about!

The City of Ember

Main Characters & Setting

Compare & Contrast

We have been reading The City of Ember for about a week and a half now and we have been introduced to quite a few characters.  Today we took some time to create a poster to hang in our classroom to remind us of some of the main characters.  We also took a few minutes to discuss what the setting of a story is and to talk about the setting of The City of Ember.

The City of Ember also goes along with our culture unit.  The people of Ember have a very different culture from us.  We also learned that there are a few things that are similar between our culture and their culture.  Through this thought we learned that although there are many cultures that are all very different, they are also all very similar!

This is our Venn Diagram we constructed to compare and contrast our world and our cultures vs. the City of Ember and their culture.

Reader's Workshop

Expanding Our Vocabulary

Today in Reader's Workshop our focus was ways to expand our vocabulary.  We learned there are many ways to learn new words but the most important thing to remember is that when we come across a new word while reading we should find out it's meaning!  To practice this skill as an entire class we read a short non-fiction, informational book about butterflies.

While reading the book Butterfly we came across the word chrysalis.  Many of us were unfamiliar with the word chrysalis so we had to use a strategy to determine the meaning of the word.  The strategy we were able to use while reading this book was to look at the pictures around the word to help determine the meaning of the word.  We were able to look at the picture below and determine that a chrysalis is similar to a cocoon.

Other strategies we learned we could use are:
-ask an adult
-look up the word in the dictionary
-use context clues

Students then used their reader's notebooks as they read to record words they were unfamiliar with. Their challenge was to find out the meaning of the word by using one of our new strategies. We learned lots of new words through this activity today!

Reading and IB Planner + Picture Day!

Reading Skill

Today's reading skill was a comprehension strategy. We learned how to check for understanding as we read by retelling or summarizing what we read. We practiced by reading

Tornadoes is a non-fiction, informative text that we read as a class.  Once we finished reading Tornadoes we summarized what we read to see if we understood.  Students then practiced this new skill during their independent reading time.

Students spent about 20 minutes reading independently before getting their reader's notebooks and summarizing the pages the read on their IDR task sheet.  We will continue to work on this still tomorrow.

IB

Today we also began our first IB planner which is called Expressions.  Expressions is a planner that focuses on how we express ourselves.  We will take a close look at cultures and how they vary around the world.  We will begin each unit by making a folder for that particular unit.

We will also copy down the main parts of the planner so that we know what we're going to be studying. I think it is also important for students to understand the format of IB and learn the vocabulary associated with each planner.  Often times students have never heard of a "Central Idea" or a "Line of Inquiry" and both are a large part of what makes up an IB planner.

Picture Day!

Picture day is Wednesday, August 24th!  Don't forget to dress your best and smile big :).  We will take pictures in the morning so you may wish to bring a change of clothes for the remainder of the day.  Remember, this is the picture that will go in the yearbook.