Room 124: Recent Episodes
Mr. Brown's 4th Grade Class
I love the summer. It gives teachers time to reflect, think, and make big plans for the next school year. Stenhouse has provided teachers with an opportunity to hear from leading educational experts on teaching and learning. These Stenhouse authors will be sharing brief, but incredibly thoughtful posts on math, reading, conferring, classroom talk and [...]
Our last unit of study in Social Studies was focused on the economy. We learned about producers, consumers, supply, and demand. We learned about goods and services, and factors that affect pricing. As a culminating activity, each table formed their own bookmark making company. They had to select a name and nominate a CEO for [...]
Three times this year! It’s a new record! Rebecca found a solution for the 10×6 pentomino puzzle earlier this year, and then just a few weeks ago, Rylee and Javionna found a second solution. During our last week of school, Rylee, Javionna, and Sydney were all working together to find yet another solution to the [...]
Our school-wide theme this year was “Create” – a very appropriate theme for our arts-based school. In response to this theme, our class wrote a song. Rebecca, her sister, and several of their classmates formed a club this year – The Make The World a Better Place Club. They have had fund raisers, given money [...]
It’s happened again! Just two months ago, Rebecca found a solution to the 10×6 pentomino puzzle. Well, Rylee and Javionna were using their morning exploration time to work with the pentominoes, and they found another solution. This is an incredibly challenging puzzle, and I’m so proud of Javionna and Rylee’s persistence and hard work. Here [...]
During the first part of Field Day, we participated in lots of water activities. Needless to day, the kids got very wet! They had a blast throwing wet sponges, catching water in plungers, and using their toes to find treasures in the mud. The weather was great, and the kids had an incredible time. A [...]
Here is a video highlighting the second part of our field day. We had a great time on the field doing relay races and tug of war. I love how the kids cheer each other on during the course of each race.
For our Review Writing study in writer’s workshop, students published their work in a variety of ways. Several students enjoyed using a free program called Audacity to make a digital audio recording of their voice. Audacity is a fun and relatively easy to use software (and it’s free!). Students learned to record their voice, add [...]
Life cycles are amazing, aren’t they? Right after Spring Break, we started observing these tiny, tiny caterpillars. They were only half a centimeter to a centimeter long when we first got them. We watched them grow and grow and grow – until several of them were an inch long. We watched in fascination as they [...]
When I posed this question to the class, the answer I got was “dirt.” Nothing too much beyond that. So I brought in a bunch of soil from my backyard, and we started taking a closer look. As you can imagine, we would surprised by what we found. We found earthworms, roots, insects, parts of [...]
In all my years of teaching, this was my first opportunity to build terrariums with my students. I was hesitant at first – how interesting can a bowl of soil be? I stand corrected. Terrariums have been one of the most fun investigations we’ve initiated. The kids had a blast designing their terrariums. Students mixed [...]
I hate to admit this, but measurement is not my favorite unit of study for math workshop. But this year I was pleasantly surprised at how much FUN I had with it. We spent a lot of time in class doing real estimating and measuring. We had out measuring tapes, rulers, yard sticks, balance scales, [...]
I love it when kids take their new learning outside the walls of our classroom. During science, we’ve had the opportunity to build terrariums in class – and the kids have loved it. We’ve learned about soil, earthworms, sow bugs, rolly polies, plants, fungus, and the water cycle. Miller decided to build his own terrarium [...]
Earlier this month, we finished a unit of study in writer’s workshop focused on opinion writing. We learned how to write effective reviews – which was really a lot of fun. Students choice of topics included books, movies, restaurants, school subjects, vacation destinations – the variety seemed endless. We learned how to establish credibility within [...]
As a culminating activity to our study of the United States, students worked with a partner to create a movie about a cultural region of their choice. Each student was responsible for showcasing information about the geography, customs, and food that are unique to their particular region. Students began by drawing sketches of their ideas [...]
Here are 4 videos about the Midwest United States…
by Isabelle and Drew
by Richard and Jaden
by Noah
by Alex
Here are 4 video projects about the South…
by Ashtan and Kaylee
by Kenneth and Anna A.
by Javionna
by Elias
Here are two video projects about the Northeast United States…
by Rebecca and Rylee
by Miller and Anna S.
Once a year, Stone Academy participates in Science Fun Day. Parent volunteers and members of the community come in to share fun and engaging science activities with each grade level. Our second graders had a blast making predicting and inferences with gobstoppers, touching ALL kinds of animals with the Critter Keeper, and finally making ice [...]
I love building shapes. And so do our kids. During our study of geometry, we spent time building geometric solids (three dimensional shapes). Using the simple materials of straws and twist-ties, our kids created some really interesting solids. Some students started out building square pyramids, but then challenged themselves to build pyramids with other kinds [...]