May 16, 2012

It's getting closer to the end of the year, and the fourth graders are doing excellent work! We're doing an ABC countdown with the first-third grade, with a different letter for each day, ending in "Z" for our last day of school. Yesterday was hat for H, Monday was grapes for G, and today we're getting ice cream!

The students did a fantastic job on their science fair projects. We'll be showing them to the school tomorrow during the day, and families are welcome to come that evening from 5:30-7:30 to view our projects and the rest of the school's. We've also been learning about heat, sound, and light in science class. Students made their own instruments and demonstrated how pitch changes, created insulated "ice keepers" to keep ice cubes from melting, and looked at how prisms separate the colors of light. They'll get a study guide at the end of the week, and the test will be on Thursday, May 24.

We've just finished reading The Bad Beginning, and many of the students have been reading the next books in the series. It's great to see them so enthusiastic about reading! Their scrapbook projects will be due on Monday. In English, we're writing research papers. I have lots of books on animals, and the students were told if they'd like to research another subject, they need to find three books about that topic. So far, we have students doing research on things from the Aztecs to Michael Jordan. They'll research and take notes this week and next, and we'll also begin drafting our papers next week. Their recent four paragraph papers were great, and I was very impressed with students' word choice.

We had tons of fun at the White Sox game yesterday! Thank you to Mr. Jim for donating those tickets. We also have a field trip coming up on Tuesday, June 5 to go to Lincoln Park Zoo with our buddies.

Finally, congratulations to Anayah! She won a state wide competition to design a rain barrel, which we'll be able to see at our school next year.