Welcome to the Grade 4/5 class blog.

When the students came back after the holiday, they were asked to respond to a question. The question was, "If you could change the world for the better, what would you change?"

There were many wonderful responses (e.g., stop war, more housing, recycle more...). So...we've been trying to explore how we can make changes for the better in our classroom community and we have been learning about people who did make a difference (e.g., Martin Luther King Jr., Ruby Bridges...).

This blog is a space where I'll be posting links to the videos that we watch in class. It's a space where I can share with parents the essence of some of the discussions that we have. It's also a space where I'll be posting some assignments and talking about some of the activities that we do.

We "have a dream" that our classroom community will be an exciting and compassionate space where the conversations will continue at home.

This blog is a work in progress. Over the next week or so, the format will gradually change.

Monday, January 17, 2011

Keeping Hope Alive!

First of all, happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day!

The students had their last songwriting session with Katherine Wheatley today! They finished writing the bridge. Here it is:

Ruby Bridges went through that door.
Rosa Parks got on a bus.
Ghandhi said to Be The Change.
Now the change is up to us.
Mandela spent many years in jail,
Fighting for equality.
Martin Luther had a dream.
Let's make that dream reality.

Today, each student had an opportunity to have a conference with a teacher about their speech. Many students are in the process of organizing their material into subtopics. Some students are even ready to turn their jot notes into paragraphs during our computer time tomorrow!

In math, the Grade 4's continued to explore transformations. The Grade 5's met with me and explored tiling using transformations.

The words of the week are as follows:

trapezoid, herbivore, congruent, parallelogram, quadrilateral

These are words that we are encountering in other subject areas. Some students will have different words assigned to them during their guided reading group tomorrow!

We are trying to spend time making inferences about stories and songs. Todays song was Superman by Five For Fighting. I asked students why they think that I might have chosen this song on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. There were some great answers including:

-It's about courage.
-Both superman and Martin Luther King Jr. are heroes.

Here's the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCdEuMk7C9E

Students took home their science tests and math quizzes today. 
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