Pinnacle Academy 2015-2016 School Year
Welcome to Mrs. Petti's Fourth Grade!
March 2016 Highlights
Highlights of Week 25: Feb. 29 - March 4, 2016
Special Event: The fourth graders showed lots of spirit during Spirit Week! On Monday, with a Group theme, Adan and his third-grade sister dressed as Luke Skywalker and Yoda; Laila and Safiya dressed as ketchup and mustard; and Saliha and Anja dressed as Mickey and Minnie Mouse. The rest of the class had not formed a group ahead of time but agreed to become parts of a house and grounds: Omer was the roof; Ian was the chimney; Emir was the door; Adem was a window; I was the walls; Dilara was the garden; and Asya was the sandbox. On Tuesday, our room was full of lively animals, including a cow, shark, lion/tiger, mouse, bunny, penguins, a wolf, a frog, a panther or party animal, a leopard, and a bug-eyed eel. On Wednesday, book characters included Moses, Captain Underpants, Thing One and Two, and more. On Recycle Day, most of the students dressed in recycled garments, included paper bag hats, plastic bag shirts or frocks, a large plastic cape, bottle cap accents, earrings fashioned from loops of paper bag strips, and more. On Friday's Wackky Color War, our room was full of purple fourth graders.
During Tuesday's Puma Pride assembly, Saliha received a certificate for excelling in dependability. After hosting the dinosaur for the month of February, it was time to pass it along to another worthy recipient! The students gathered before the assembly to give him a good send-off.
Math: We continued our unit on fractions and probability concepts. The students practiced converting between fractions and decimals. They explored probability concepts related to decks of cards, dice, and a variety of spinners.
Language Arts: We read a variety of Dr. Seuss books this week in honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday and Read Across America Day. The students enjoyed an extended period of silent reading that day as well. Most of the students recited poetry that they memorized this week. Many of the students wrote poetry throughout the week. On Friday, most of the students tried their hand at writing "diamante" poetry, which follows a format resulting in a diamond-shaped, seven-line poem. Lines one and seven are nouns which are related but different or opposite in meaning. Lines 2 and 6 contain two adjectives describing the nouns in lines 1 and 7, respectively. Lines 3 and 5 contain three verbs which are present participles (ending in "-ing"), also describing the nouns in lines 1 and 7. Line 4 contains four nouns; the first two related to line 1; the second two relate to line 7. Here are a few samples from the class:
The students also wrote stories about their animals on Tuesday's animal day.
Science: We reinforced concepts and terms from the force, motion, and energy unit. The students practiced creating line and bar graphs to accompany data tables. Late in the week, we launched a new unit on electricity and magnetism.
Social Studies: We learned about Virginia's Native Americans, picking up where we left off in the fall. We learned more about the three language groups (Algonquian, Siouan, and Iroquoian): where they lived and some distinguishing features of the groups.
shark
majestic, manly
swimming, biting, fighting
jaw, fin, blowhole, pack
talking, splashing, playing
graceful, small
dolphin
cat
soft, cuddly,
purring, sleeping, stretching
paws, meowing, bark, woof
biting, running, chasing
noisy, sweet
dog
dog
dirty, loud
chasing, fetching, crunching
fur, land, purr, meow
stretching, napping, staring
quiet, speechless
cat
Highlights of Week 26: March 7 - 11, 2016
Math: We concluded our unit on fractions and probability concepts. On Monday, the students explored probability with a cube drop experiment that wasn't working out very well, as the cubes tended to bounce off of their colored grids. On Tuesday, we improved on the experiment by taking it to the computer lab and designing Google spreadsheets with the same ratios of colored squares, then wrote a formula to generate a random cell selection. The students entered the data on the color of each selected cell and called out in excitement when they finally hit the yellow cell (which was the rarest, with only one yellow cell out of 100). Collectively, the class generated over 2,000 experimental outcomes, which we compiled into a class chart. (Please see the "cube drop experiment" link on the Enrichment page. Feel free to update with new data.) We compared our experimental outcomes with the theoretical probability of getting each color. After a unit review, the students took a unit test on Thursday.
We investigated pi on Friday in anticipation of Pi Day on Monday, March 14. We brought a lot of circular objects out to the blacktop, and pairs of students measured and recorded the circumference and diameter of some of the objects, then used a calculator to divide the circumference by the diameter to see how close to pi the ratio was. Some of the students came very close to pi. Some of the students used string to explore the ratio by cutting a length of string that exactly fit the circumference of a circular object, then cutting the string into smaller sections the size of the diameter; as expected, they found that it took just a bit more than three diameters to equal the size of the circumference. Some of the students also drew a huge chalk circle, and many of the students enjoyed pacing the circumference and diameter to explore pi on a larger scale. (Please visit our "pi exploration" data table on the Enrichment page. You may continue to enter data on the sheet!)
Language Arts: We visited the library this week. We enjoyed more Dr. Seuss stories and poetry explorations. On Thursday, the students listened to a recording of local tree frogs making high-pitched calls. They attempted to recreate these sounds in writing and shared their ideas on whiteboards. We listened to Dr. Seuss's use of onomatopoeia (the creation of words that imitate natural sounds) in Mr. Brown Can Moo. Can You? The students wrote and shared their own poems involving onomatopoeia.
Science: We looked for signs of spring in a garden bed and found clusters of daffodils and tulips pushing up through the mulch. We found new growth on old plants and buds on trees. We investigated static electricity by rubbing balloons on the students' clothing and hair. We investigated conductors and insulators by attempting to making circuits with batteries, wires, and lightbulbs, then adding a variety of different classroom materials into the set-up. If the lightbulb still lit up, the object was a conductor; if the lightbulb did not light up, the object was an insulator. The students found that unpainted metal conducts electricity, but painted metal did not conduct electricity. The lens ring of the classroom camera conducted electricity, while the rest of it did not. A metal box did not, and we wondered why. The spiral of a notebook conducted all the way along the spiral, and electricity could also travel through two metal objects touching each other, including two coins, a spiral and a chair leg, and a paper clip and a pushpin.
Social Studies: The students completed reviewed our unit on Virginia's earliest people, including some information on modern day Indians of Virginia. They finished the week with a unit assessment.
Special Events: During Monday's assembly to announce the Spirit Week winners, we learned that among the Upper Building winners, Dilara won for the best animal outfit (as a head-to-toe leopard), Adan and his sister won for best group (Yoda and Luke Skywalker), and Anja won for best recycled costume (with special mention of her paper bag earrings).
On Monday, we visited the second grade classroom to interact with their Famous Americans Living History Museum.
On Friday evening, many of the students came to STEM Night to explore a wide range of activities. Our classroom was the site of Stepping Through Paper investigations.
Highlights of Week 27: March 14 - 18, 2016
Math: We celebrated Pi Day on Monday and extended our celebration all week long! Omer and Saliha represented the fourth grade in the Pi Day Math Quiz Bowl. All of the fourth graders brought their Roaring Math Journals and attempted to solve the problems presented to the fourth and fifth graders. It was a close competition; Omer's team edged out the other team by just one point. Ian represented the fourth grade in the pie-eating contest. We were impressed by the students who had memorized many digits of pi; while no fourth graders entered that competition, during lunch time over the next couple of days, Anja found that she was able to memorize several dozen digits of the hundreds that were still displayed on the walls of the cafeteria. Following the 4th - 8th grade Pi Day celebration, the fourth graders had their own pie-eating celebration in the classroom. Several of the students said that this was their first time ever eating pie, and they thought it was quite tasty.
We had investigated pi the prior Friday by measuring the circumference and diameter of various circular objects (including large chalk circles and plastic lids) and then dividing the circumference by the diameter to approximate pi. We arranged to guide the second and third grade students in investigating pi later in the week. This gave us a chance for the fourth graders to solidify their understanding of pi as the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle. We also created additional large chalk circles on the blacktop. On Thursday, the fourth grade guided the third graders in pacing the large chalk circles and comparing the circumference to the diameter. On Friday, they guided the second graders, and they felt more confident in their explanations and coaching. We received positive comments from the students and teachers about these collaborative investigations, and we collected lots of data. Even with our informal, non-standard measurements (using pacing), most of the students found a ratio that was quite close to pi.
In addition to our pi-related explorations, the students also investigated the perimeter of pattern block shapes and measured and mapped their bedrooms and our classroom with scale drawings. Some of the students used the "Thinking Blocks" area of Math Playground to investigate advanced problem solving involving fractions and multi-step problems.
Science: The students learned more about electricity, including the role of electrons in static electricity and current electricity. They conducted a simple investigation of static electricity involving bits of paper attracted to rulers and other plastic items that they charged by rubbing them vigorously in their hair or on clothing or carpeting. Later in the week, they used snap circuit kits to set up simple, series, and/or parallel circuits. On Thursday, we took a brief nature walk around the garden bed that we had examined about ten days earlier and noted the explosion of daffodils, the growth of the tulip bulbs, and the appearance of buds on the tree. We took a longer nature walk around the natural area, and the students were quite surprised to see how wintry the area still appeared, on the whole. (See the separate gallery of our nature walk.) On Friday, we were also intrigued by the eaglecam at the National Arboretum, allowing us to peek in on the first newly-hatched baby bald eagle and its parents.
Social Studies: We began our study of Jamestown. As we launched our unit, we examined an image of an old painting portraying the first Jamestown settlers coming ashore in 1607: soldiers poised with muskets, a man who appeared to be a preacher holding a Bible, sailors watching from the largest ship, and others. The students brainstormed some of the emotions the settlers might have been experiencing at that moment.
Language Arts: In addition to our science and social studies readings, we had time for independent reading, writing, and publishing of poetry.
Highlights of Week 28: March 28 - April 1, 2016
Math: We used grids to estimate the area of our hands in square inches and extrapolated the students' entire skin area from this data. We examined the number of square inches in a square foot and the number of square feet in a square yard. We used grids and scale measurements to estimate the area of other irregular shapes, such as islands. We investigated formulas for the area of rectangles and parallelograms. The students cut apart and reshaped parallelograms to turn them into rectangles, as they discovered the connection between the formula for finding the area of a rectangle (length x width) and the area of a parallelogram (base x height). Many of the students used an online app for exploring area and perimeter. The students also created pie graphs of the experimental data that they had collected earlier in a probability investigation using Google sheets. Many students also found time to create new math craft projects.
Science: The students learned more about some key scientists who advanced our understanding and use of electricity. We watched some videos and explored online simulations as part of our study of electricity. They learned more about static electricity, including Benjamin Franklin's kite experiment and invention of the lightning rod, and the process of charging a Leyden jar. We conducted some additional investigations of static electricity with mixed success as the air became more humid as the week progressed. The students learned about some of Thomas Edison's accomplishments and the challenges of developing a system for large-scale use of electricity to light a community. We were introduced to Michael Faraday's invention of the electromagnet in powering the first electric motor and learned some of the key principles in the operation of power plants and transmitting electricity across large distances.
We took nature walks around the garden bed, the natural area, and the meditation garden, adding to our ongoing observations of signs of spring. We peeked in regularly at the eaglecam at the National Arboretum, marveling at the young eaglets' rapid development.
Social Studies: We continued our study of Jamestown, learning about some of the challenges the early English settlers faced as they chose a site and began to establish a new colony. We looked at photos of the remains of the original Jamestown settlement.
Language Arts: In addition to our science and social studies readings, we had time for independent writing and publishing. Most students wrote about a moment from their spring break. Everyone wrote and revised haiku; many of the students wrote about the eaglets and their parents. Some of the students revised and published diamante, rhyming, and/or shape poems as well.
Special Event: We were delighted to watch the original play by the Odyssey of the Mind team, presented during Friday's Puma Pride Assembly. Our fourth graders Safiya, Anja, and Adan gave dynamic performances as part of the seven-member group, and the play was creative, clever, and humorous. We also congratulated Asya and Adan on receiving Puma Pride recognition for the character trait, "fair."