Hello to our '4H' families!
Our busy week was highlighted by our field trip on Tuesday afternoon to the World Dairy Expo. We were treated to warm sunshine, a friendly and knowledgeable guide named Mitch, and the chance to get up close to the cleanest, most pampered collection of cows we are ever going to see! We watched part of the championship judging in the Coliseum, saw how the milking machines were used - and how they felt on our fingers! - how the milk ran through the lines into massive steel tanks, all monitored by computers, met Alice in Dairyland, who taught us about the many nutrients in milk (and how much sugar is in a soda!), and ended with a welcome cold carton of milk to drink ourselves. Our students were very well behaved, interested in everything, asked excellent questions, and were lots of fun to tour around with! It was great fun to have our chaperones with us as well, and many thanks again to Tad Renfert, Jay Weatherford, Beth Graf, Laura Lynch, Angie Williams, Renee Dahlk, and Doug Rykal, for coming along and helping to keep track of us all! Our fourth graders have come a long way in their knowledge of Wisconsin's dairy industry. Next on the agenda: Wisconsin geography and mapping, along with our first science unit which is all about magnetism and electricity.
This past week also had us digging deeper into Unit 2 of Everyday Math, where we are plotting data and determining the maximum, minimum, range, mode, median, and mean. We are also securing skills with carrying in addition and borrowing in subtraction. This week our class began keeping track of their individual progress with the basic facts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Each student established a baseline score of how many correct facts they could answer within 3 minutes for each operation. Every week they will try to improve their past score - with the ultimate goal of answering 100 basic facts correctly in 3 minutes for each operation. Every morning they try a different operation - this weekly practice will help them become more automatic with their responses. Of course, any extra practice they can put in at home with flashcards, etc. will help them improve more quickly! Multiplication and division, in particular, needs some extra attention.
We are over halfway through reading Tuck Everlasting, and the 'plot thickens', as do the discussion topics that this book always leads us into! Our students are also keeping track of their own reading by recording the titles and authors of all the books they finish on a Reading Log. We proudly reached our goal this week with successfully sustaining a focused, silent reading session of 20 minutes. This goal has actually been a pleasure and not a very difficult challenge at all for this class of avid readers. Many students plead for a time like this everyday, and we talk about how cool it is that we are able to get so deeply into our reading that we forget where we are, and how we can get lost in the stories we are reading. This practice of developing reading 'stamina' is already serving us well as we strive for the same focus during our writing times. Journal entries are becoming more descriptive with each attempt, and we are beginning to share with each other some of our more creative written ideas. We admire each other's attempts, and we are motivating each other to try more. Today we just had to take advantage of our beautiful fall weather, and the fact that we have an exceptional prairie right in our 'backyard'. Everyone carried out their journals and pencils, found their own little spot to sit along the winding path that cuts right through the middle of five foot tall wild grasses and flowers, and wrote for 15 minutes in silence. We tried to record all we could hear, see, feel, and smell among the waving stalks that scratched against each other in the wind, baking in the sun. We will be sharing our observations next week, and already most agree that we should try this during each season and compare the experiences.
The annual West Middleton Scholastic Book Fair will take place next week in the LMC, with Family Night on Tuesday after school. I hope to see you there! Melanie Hannam
Our busy week was highlighted by our field trip on Tuesday afternoon to the World Dairy Expo. We were treated to warm sunshine, a friendly and knowledgeable guide named Mitch, and the chance to get up close to the cleanest, most pampered collection of cows we are ever going to see! We watched part of the championship judging in the Coliseum, saw how the milking machines were used - and how they felt on our fingers! - how the milk ran through the lines into massive steel tanks, all monitored by computers, met Alice in Dairyland, who taught us about the many nutrients in milk (and how much sugar is in a soda!), and ended with a welcome cold carton of milk to drink ourselves. Our students were very well behaved, interested in everything, asked excellent questions, and were lots of fun to tour around with! It was great fun to have our chaperones with us as well, and many thanks again to Tad Renfert, Jay Weatherford, Beth Graf, Laura Lynch, Angie Williams, Renee Dahlk, and Doug Rykal, for coming along and helping to keep track of us all! Our fourth graders have come a long way in their knowledge of Wisconsin's dairy industry. Next on the agenda: Wisconsin geography and mapping, along with our first science unit which is all about magnetism and electricity.
This past week also had us digging deeper into Unit 2 of Everyday Math, where we are plotting data and determining the maximum, minimum, range, mode, median, and mean. We are also securing skills with carrying in addition and borrowing in subtraction. This week our class began keeping track of their individual progress with the basic facts of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Each student established a baseline score of how many correct facts they could answer within 3 minutes for each operation. Every week they will try to improve their past score - with the ultimate goal of answering 100 basic facts correctly in 3 minutes for each operation. Every morning they try a different operation - this weekly practice will help them become more automatic with their responses. Of course, any extra practice they can put in at home with flashcards, etc. will help them improve more quickly! Multiplication and division, in particular, needs some extra attention.
We are over halfway through reading Tuck Everlasting, and the 'plot thickens', as do the discussion topics that this book always leads us into! Our students are also keeping track of their own reading by recording the titles and authors of all the books they finish on a Reading Log. We proudly reached our goal this week with successfully sustaining a focused, silent reading session of 20 minutes. This goal has actually been a pleasure and not a very difficult challenge at all for this class of avid readers. Many students plead for a time like this everyday, and we talk about how cool it is that we are able to get so deeply into our reading that we forget where we are, and how we can get lost in the stories we are reading. This practice of developing reading 'stamina' is already serving us well as we strive for the same focus during our writing times. Journal entries are becoming more descriptive with each attempt, and we are beginning to share with each other some of our more creative written ideas. We admire each other's attempts, and we are motivating each other to try more. Today we just had to take advantage of our beautiful fall weather, and the fact that we have an exceptional prairie right in our 'backyard'. Everyone carried out their journals and pencils, found their own little spot to sit along the winding path that cuts right through the middle of five foot tall wild grasses and flowers, and wrote for 15 minutes in silence. We tried to record all we could hear, see, feel, and smell among the waving stalks that scratched against each other in the wind, baking in the sun. We will be sharing our observations next week, and already most agree that we should try this during each season and compare the experiences.
The annual West Middleton Scholastic Book Fair will take place next week in the LMC, with Family Night on Tuesday after school. I hope to see you there! Melanie Hannam
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