Today went by very quickly.  I thought you'd be interested in how our day went, so read below for the details.

LANGUAGE:  I introduced pronouns to the class.  (They are words that take the place of nouns like:  he, she, they, them, his, her, our, it, I, this, that, these, those.)  We played a few games with pronouns and you can check them out by viewing the post I made earlier in the day...here. 

WRITING:  We talked a little about story organization by listening to a picture book called Tops and Bottoms.  It was a clever story about how a hare outsmarted a bear, but I pointed out to them how well organized the plot was.  (The hare makes a deal with the bear and outsmarts him.  The bear demands a new deal...the hare outsmarts him.  The bear gets really angry and demands a new deal...and yet the hare still outsmarts him.)  It was fun trying to predict how the hare would win in the end.

MATH:  We worked on a math problem from page  93 in your math journal.  Essentially, this was it:

Mrs. Neal is setting up chairs for Parent Night. She wants them to be in rows with the same number of chairs in each row. Use the clues to find out how many chairs are in the room.

*When she tried to set up the chairs in rows of 2, there was 1 leftover chair.

*She also had 1 leftover chair when she tried to set them up in rows of 3.

*One of her students suggested that she try rows of 4. There was STILL 1 leftover chair.

*Finally, she tried rows of 5. This worked fine. There were no leftover chairs.

*The number of chairs in the room was the smallest possible number that fits all of these clues.

When you have found the answer, record it in your journal on page 93

Next, circle dots to show the chairs in rows of 2, 3, and 4, each with 1 chair left over. (Here is an example...I tried 11 chairs to see if it fit the clues.  It didn't work.)


We had time afterward to play a place value game.  Click below to try:


This afternoon, we answered questions about the Judy Blume books we are reading.  If I did not give you a copy yesterday, there will be one waiting for you when you return.

We had a Thanksgiving All School Convo this afternoon before we headed to the music room for fine arts. 

I hope you are enjoying your trip...and that you took a bunch of books to read!
Take care,
Mrs. Neal

December 3rd the Berkeley Community (which will include the Upper, Middle and Lower Divisions) will be participating in a Holiday "Wrap- In”.

All children from the Lower Division are asked to bring in one new toy (or article of clothing) in a plain gift bag next week. (Any plain bag, white or colored, would be great! They should simply be a color that can be easily decorated by the children.)
The requested age range for toys & clothing is anywhere between 12 months and 11 years.

Ideas might include (for boys & girls) games, puzzles, dolls, stuffed animals, sports equipment/balls, art supplies, action figures, books, or clothes. However, any toy or clothing that is suitable for children in this age range will be welcomed.

Discovery Groups will be working with older Berkeley students (on Dec 3rd) to decorate their gift bags filled with their donated toy for the migrant children at the Redlands Migrant Daycare Center in Ruskin.

If you send in a toy anytime between now and December 3rd, the gifts can be stored in our classroom. 

Thank you for your help!

Hello!

During school on Friday we entered in this data into our Math Journals (pages 27 and 43):

High:  89 at McAllen, Texas

Low:  -36 at Chandalar Lake, Alaska

(Calculate the range.)

Sunrise:  6:55 AM

Sunset:  5:36 PM

(Calculate the length of day.)

We also visited Mrs. Driscoll for keyboarding and took a spelling test.

During Math, we visited the site below:

By clicking the "play button" at the bottom of the screen, you can click your way through the lesson like we did.  (Don't rush ahead and peek at the answers!)

We also played multiplication baseball.  I was on Julia's team...we lost by one point to Markus and Jack!  

I also demonstrated how the students could make movies using the Zimmer Twin website.  A tutorial is located ------->

During rotation, students worked on finishing up:

Florida Maps

Food Chain Puzzles

Anyone who was finished with these items were able to try out the Zimmer Twins website for fun.  You can only save your movies by creating an account.  That will have to be your parents' decision.  Show them the website and ask if they would be willing to grant you permission.  (They need to activate your account.)  You are allowed to utilize the site at school as much as you like, but you won't be able to save your work.

During rotation, we also read in our Fudge books.  

Fudge-A-Mania:  Read chapters-  The Best News of the Century and Fudge-A-Mania

Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing: Read Chapter 6

Double Fudge: We read all of "Mr. Money", but only part of "The Green Stuff".

We've missed you and are looking forward to seeing you Monday!

Kubbu is a website you can access from the third grade page.  It is a site with practice activities for Wordly Wise.

You can also click the icon below to access the site.

Sign in by typing in your teacher's username:  nealkel

and your Reading Counts password.

Once logged in, you'll see this menu:

Choose "practice activities" to access the review games.  Each lesson has a different activity:  domino matching or a crossword puzzle.

After you select the lesson (lesson six for this week), you'll see an option like this:

If you select "familiarize", you'll practice with flashcards.  

If you select "solve", you'll be able to practice matching dominoes.

I hope you enjoy it!

Don't forget, there are other options for Wordly Wise practice located here.

This morning, we shared good beginnings from the books we looked through in the library. Some were funny, others were very mysterious!  

We also completed page 87 in the math journal for morning work, along with a spelling review sheet.

During math, we talked about the Commutative Property of Multiplication, which means that it doesn't matter what order the factors are in, the answer is still the same.  Please look below to get an idea of what we did.

Unit 4 Lesson 4-5

This morning, we completed our daily  "Caught Ya", math boxes from page 85, and spelling rainbow words.  We also talked about how great stories usually have great beginnings.  (So that when we write stories, each of us thinks about how to create excellent beginnings, too.)

We went to the library to look for books that had great beginnings (or grabbers).  Please review the power point below for a better idea of what we discussed.

Organization- Great Beginnings

During math, we completed a lesson on how multiplication and division are related.

We also played with an interactive game called Kids and Cookies.  (Click the picture to try it yourself.)

After trying these together, we completed page 86 in the math journal.  We also played a couple rounds of "Division Arrays" with partners.

This afternoon, we talked more about what good readers do.  Earlier in the year, we talked about how readers identify words they don't know...and try to figure them out, readers ask and develop questions about the story, and readers practice reading aloud fluently.  Today, we talked about how we often make judgments about characters in stories.  Check out the power point below.  

After discussing the job of Character Captain,we read in our Judy Blume books (and were to complete a Character Captain form based on the reading, which I will send home for you).  Please look below:
Fudge-A-Mania: pages 23-51
Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing: Chapters 3,4, and 5
Double Fudge: Chapters 3,4, and 5

Before we headed to Art with Mrs. Hillmer, we painted our Food Chain puzzle, too.  You can do that when you come back to school.  Remember to consult the rubric to be sure your puzzle has all the parts of an ocean food chain.  You can click here to play a couple of food chain games for review.

I hope you are feeling better.  We'd love to have you come back tomorrow!

Jungle Jim
Tutpup

Interactive Games Galore
Rapid Recall

Today was a fun one.  The children got to create a project I find to be WAY too much work:  SQUIDDY!
 

We also worked, too!  This morning, we reviewed Common and Proper Nouns.  I've collected a worksheet for you, but you can click the link to play a game, too.

We also reviewed Wordly Wise words for Lesson 5. You can check out BrainFlips for a review.

For math, we talked about circumference (the distance measured around the rim of a circle) and diameter (the distance across the center of a circle).  Then we measured the circumference and diameter of several circles and shared what data we found.

We actually discovered that if you triple the diameter, you will get VERY close to the circumference measurement.    We completed journal page 76 as well.  (There are some tricky patterns there!)

This afternoon, we talked about different kinds of maps:  Political, Physical, and Economic.  Please review this power point for helpful hints on what these maps tell us about an area.


After we got an idea of what kind of maps these are, we started to make maps of Florida.  There were guides to share around the room.  You can start designing these maps when you come back to school.

We also researched more about the Timucua in small groups and worked on our Bitstrips Comic Strip for Manatee Blues.  We will get back together with our Timucua groups on Wednesday and we'll catch you up.  You can ask one of your three teammates what they learned today, too.

I hope you are feeling better!  We've missed you and hope to see you back in the morning.