* We survived the first nine weeks of fourth grade together. (YEAH!)
* The Star Lab (a mobile planetarium) came to visit and we learned about constellations, moon phases, and the planets.
* Our second early release/STEM day was a success. (Pictures to follow.) Students had to create spider cages to hold 10 spiders. (You should have seen their faces when I told them Mrs. Gerber and I had been up collecting real spiders for hours the night before.)
* Intervention Fridays are going well. We pretest the students on a topic (this time was multiplication facts) and break them into groups based on what they know. Different groups focus on different lessons related to multiplication. Some focus on tricks to help learn the facts, some start getting a jump on how to use the area model & partial products to solve larger multiplication problems, and others apply what they know to practice through games. No matter which group kids are in, they ALL need to know their multiplication facts without hesitation.
Moving forward into the new nine weeks we will be officially starting multiplication and division (no "old school" ways here.) This includes word problems, factors & multiples, and multiplicative comparison (sounds harder than it is!) We will continue with science for another week or so focusing on space before turning back to Social Studies and some of the battles of the American Revolution.