October 6, 2015

I am sending home information today about our Day of the Dead project. This project has three parts to it. First, every student needs to select someone in their family who has passed away and that they would like to honor for this project. Then they need to interview two people about this honoree and collect some objects or pictures they would like to put in a shoebox ofrenda for that person. This is the only part that must be done at home! In school, we are going to turn these interviews into paragraphs and use the objects to create the ofrenda. If students like, they may work on their ofrenda at home, but it is not a requirement. We will share the ofrendas and paragraphs in class on October 29 and 30.

In celebration of Hispanic Heritage month, each grade in the school is learning a different dance! We practiced the bachata today, and I am going to tape the students doing this dance on Thursday. If they'd like to practice at home, here's the video we used.

I hope all the students are ready for their math test! It is this Thursday, and will cover rounding and finding multiples and factors of a number. We are not doing a times tables test this week because of the math test on Thursday.

Finally, our class will be featured in the bulletin this Sunday at St. Sylvester! Here's a transcript of the article:

Fourth Grade Bloggers

Fourth grade is embarking on an exciting new writing adventure this year by becoming bloggers! Our class has joined Kidblog, a site dedicated to allowing students to post in a way that's safe and monitored by the teacher. The students have written tons of great posts so far, with topics ranging from what it's like to be nine years old to ice skating and baseball games to pets. Students can also add pictures and comment on each other's writing, giving them an audience for their writing and feedback from other people. We even made our own avatars by drawing self-portraits on the school's iPads.

To help our writing reach an even bigger audience, we joined a blogging community with other fourth grade classrooms in Ohio, Indiana, and Texas. Over the next few weeks, we will take turns commenting on each other's blogs. The students are very excited about forming connections with fourth graders they've never met before and seeing the comments that are being left on their blogs! David B. said, "I like blogging because it's fun and I get to talk to my friends." Caitlyn R. added, "I love blogging because we get to meet new classes."