My Wish for my Students

 

 

4th Grade Secret Garden Watercolors

 

Happy Diwali

 

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore

A Conversation with Ray Bradbury

PA and TD for the Week of 4-26

 KTD Lit will be exploring the picture book The Barnubus Project by The Fan Brothers. The story is about rejected pets from a peculiar pet store trying to escape the lab they were created in and see the world. The kids will be creating a pet in the style of Barnabus too!

KTD Math will be playing a dice game that focuses on doubling the number rolled and, using a chart I have at school, crossing out four numbers they double in a row. We are playing connect four!

1TD will be reading The Book of Bad Ideas this week. The story is a collection of ideas that kids have had, but they soon realize that they were bad ideas. "Never go down the stairs in a box with your friend." Clearly a bad idea. The kids will be writing and illustrating a page to add to the book based on their experiences. Lots of laughter this week, I'm sure!

2TD is going to begin a project that will take us to the end of the year. The kids will be evaluating past winners of The Caldecott Medal, an award given to one picture book a year that shows excellence in the illustrations and the text. The class will be given the criteria that is used by the people who select the winner and the same criteria will be used by the class. We will be reading winners that were written in the 1940's to the present. 

3PA will finish up our work on the short story "The Green Man" this week. Next, we will be reading the original version of Hans Christian Anderson's classic from 1843, "The Ugly Duckling." Our focus will be on how the duckling's identity was shaped by his experiences with others in the story. 

4PA have begun their group of three drawings showing The Secret Garden in three stages of development. Barren, growing, and splendor will be captured by the kids in their artwork. Each picture has a few quotes the students found in the text as evidence of the garden's development. 

5PA will continue reading their autobiographies and a work of fiction by the same author this week. We will also be spending a lot of our time remaining time this year on Capstone. I will have a date for when they will present by the end of the week, coordinating with the 5th grade team because the 5th graders will spend a whole day in PA presenting and watching what their classmates developed. 

PA and TD for the Week of 4-12

 Talent Development students will all be working with the poetry of Shel Silverstein this week. We will focus on creating spoonerisms that we learned about last week with Runny Babbit. Students will be taking different poems and rewriting them using spoonerisms. 

3PA will be reading a short story titled "The Green Man" this week. There are many layers to this tale that we will be discussing together. 

4PA will begin the week with a surprise, and then we will finish reading The Secret Garden. The kids will begin an art project relating to the book by the end of the week.  

5PA will begin a new unit this week. We will be reading an autobiography written by an author of fiction for younger people. The kids will be annotating the book using post it notes that will be color coded. 

New PA and TD Schedule

This is the new PA and TD schedule for 4th Quarter

4PA 9:30-10:30

2TD 10:30-11:00

KTD 11:30-12:00

5PA 12:35-1:35

3PA 1:35-2:20

1TD 2:35-2:55 

Safety First

 

Safety is our first priority at Brookdale, so I wanted to share a photo of what my classroom looks like as we head back to a five day schedule. The carpet circles have been measured out to have 3 feet of space on all sides. We will be safe and ready to learn!