Reminders!

Field Trips & School Pictures

On Monday we will receive a visit from a Utah Museum of Fine Arts representative. They will come in and prep us for our visit to the museum on Tuesday, October 6. This is part of our 4th grade Art education curriculum. The Tuesday field trip will take 2 hours out of our regular morning schedule, and we will be back in the building by noon for lunch. We do make a second trip to the museum in the Spring.

School pictures are scheduled for Wednesday, October 7. Please have your packet filled out and returned by this date.

Thursday, October 8, we will be headed to Red Butte Gardens. We are currently studying Utah environments/habitats (desert, wetland, and forest) and look forward to providing students with this learning experience with plants natural to Utah.

*Please make sure your student is here at school on time, especially the days we have field trips scheduled.

Introducing Ms. Pat

Google Earth Measuring Tool Lesson

Pat Lambrose works in the Instructional Technology Department for the Salt Lake City School District. She has been my mentor, for implementing technology into my teaching (eMINTS), over the past 3 years. I respect her and appreciate her knowledge and assistance.

Today Ms. Pat taught the students of Room 207 to use the measurement tool on Google Earth. This tool allows you to measure distances or paths, with variable increments (e. g. feet, miles, meters, kilometers). Students measured our school field virtually to find out wether or not we actually ran a mile for P. E. this past Monday. It turns out that 4 laps around our field is a little over a mile! We'll have to let Becky know! We also found the field's perimeter and area.

Remember Ms. Pat's challenge 4th graders: Demonstrate to a friend or someone at home how the measurement tool on Google Earth works!

Save Fred!

Class Team Building Activity


We're now into our 6th week of school and recently changed desks and partners in Room 207! Mr. Kelly wants students to learn to communicate, cooperate, and work well with others, so we participated in the Save Fred activity today. Check out the video below!

Primary and Secondary Colors

End of the Week Art Lesson

My wife, Sarah ("Mrs. Kelly" to my class), a former elementary school teacher and art aficionado, is kind enough to come in every so often and teach art to my class each year. Today's lesson was on primary and secondary colors. Students were taught how primary colors are mixed to make secondary colors. So I ask my students to ponder the following questions:

• Do you remember which two colors mixed make green?
• What color is created when red and yellow are mixed?
• What is the remaining secondary color?

This also means that my two youngest children tag along.

Kate

Isaac

Here the students are mixing their colors.

The result, a color wheel that accurately represents both the primary and secondary colors. Nice work Room 207!

Commutative and Identity Properties of Multiplication

Helpful Hints for Homework or Review!

Visit From a Community Gardner

Learning About Plants


My friend and neighbor, Gina, who runs a community garden came in and spoke to our 4th grade students about plants that are "native" to Utah. She also demonstrated the difference water makes in a plant's growth, showing a sunflower that received constant water all summer and another that only received what the rain provided. We appreciate her willingness to share her knowledge of plants and appreciate the gift (a soft dwarf sumac tree) which I've already planted in our class garden box.


This is our class garden box (number 12). We currently have beets, peas, some flowers, and a tree planted there.
The plant in the middle is our soft dwarf sumac tree.

Patterns of 8 Lesson

Expressions Math Board

Missed out on today's Math lesson or having trouble remembering your patterns of 8 in both multiplication and division? Watch the following vidcasts and catch up with your classmates!

Part 1 - This is how we use Math Boards to visually develop the concept of multiplication by circling (in this case) groups of 8, keeping a running total, and writing equations to represent our work.

Part 2 - Do you understand the inverse relationship between multiplication and division? If you know your factors and the product for any given multiplication equation, then you can form a division fact from it.

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