The students learned about the Harlem Renaissance and that the Charleston is a famous dance craze from that era. Students studied the movements of the Charleston and used these moves to showcase their learning of equivalent fractions.

The students began with a fraction and had to find one equivalent fraction by multiplying and one by dividing. The students then correlated this to medium, high, and low levels of movement in dance.

• High Level – Equivalent Fraction Found by Multiplying (the numbers of the fraction are getting higher)
• Medium Level – Beginning Equivalent Fraction
• Low Level – Equivalent Fraction Found by Dividing (the numbers of the fraction are getting lower)

Come by our hall and see videos of the students showcasing their dances. Each class has a QR code linked to their video on a display in the hall.

For the past three weeks, we have been reading President of the Whole Fifth Grade by Sherri Winston.  We have also been studying the election process.  To further our understanding of an election, we held our own class election.  First, students were nominated by their classmates.  Each class then held a primary and elected two students to serve in the fourth grade class president election.  In the final election, students had to prepare and give a speech to their classmates.

Pictured below are the six students selected to run in the presidential election.

From left to right:

Kimora Garner, Sydney Ridgeway, Tommaj Harris, Ira Hamilton, Aja Stephens, and Zykeria Evans

AND THE WINNER IS..

ZYKERIA EVANS

Pictured below is Zykeria giving her speech.

This past week, the students were able to experience an infusion lesson with the art teacher, Mr. Bryant, as a part of learning about our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln. The students began by acting out a play called, Will the Real Abraham Lincoln Please Stand Up. The play was about three characters who all claimed to be the real Abraham Lincoln. Each character gave a lot of true information about the life and presidency of Abraham Lincoln, but two of them also gave some false information. The students had to figure out which Abraham Lincoln was the real one. The students wrote down important facts about Lincoln’s life based on the information read in the play. Next, the students watched a video about Abraham Lincoln and wrote down more facts about his life. See pictures of us working here:

Mr. Bryant discussed how these facts came from two different sources: one a play (print source) and one a video (digital source). He discussed that these are like complementary colors in art: they are different, but they complement each other and work together to create beautiful artwork just like our facts work together to tell the story of Abraham Lincoln. The students then used their facts, complementary colors, and a screen-print design of Lincoln to create a very unique artwork of Abraham Lincoln.  Each class had a slightly different silhouette of Lincoln to differentiate between the classes. See the pictures of our artwork here:

After creating the artwork, students recorded themselves stating one of the most interesting things they learned about Abraham Lincoln and created a short video collage of these statements. You can open your camera app on your phone and hover over each image below to see each class’s video:

Elise in Mrs. Watts’s class is headed to the regional reading fair after placing 1st place in her division at the school and district levels. She did her reading fair board on the Chronicles of Narnia book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. We are very proud of Elise’s work, and we all wish her the best of luck at regionals!

Yesterday, we took our annual fourth grade field trip to Choctaw Days at Lauren Rogers Museum of Art.

Students participated in a variety of stations to learn about traditions of the Choctaw Indians in our area.  We tried frybread, a traditional Indian food.  Students used paper strips to stimulate basket weaving after viewing the basket gallery.  We also experienced and participated in Choctaw dances and created beaded necklaces to simulate ones that Choctaw Indians would wear.  A great time was had by everyone!

For the past three weeks, the students have studied about famous children’s authors that mostly write chapter books for upper elementary age students. The students read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl and learned all about his life as an example. The students then paired up to research their own famous author. Each pair wrote a biography about the author and read a book by the author. The students then wrote summaries of the book, wrote the narrative elements of the book, critiqued the book, and created a book bag to represent the book. The students took all of this information and created a PowerPoint presentation to share with the class. The students put a lot of hard work into this, and it paid off. They did a great job!

The students learned all about the holiday Day of the Dead that is celebrated throughout Mexico and other South American and Central American countries to remember the loved ones they have lost. Students learned that Calaca is the Spanish word for Skeleton. The students also learned about sugar skulls and how during the Day of the Dead celebrations these sweet treats are decorated using symmetry, pattern, color, and repetition. The students took this knowledge and created a Calaca of their own using the artistic techniques learned from the sugar skulls and their knowledge of the different bones of the skeletal system.  Come see our beautiful Sugar Skull Skeletons hanging in the foyer!

The students learned about artwork by famous artist, Alexandra Nechita. This artist began her career at the early age of eight years old – how cool! She incorporated stories in her abstract art and often made the artwork of a colossal size. Each class then read a story by famous author, Roald Dahl, and created a work of art that correlated with the summary of that story using the someone-wanted-but-so-then method of completing summaries. Look at our artwork and see if you can figure out our summaries!

Schipke’s Class  – The Witches by Roald Dahl

Watts’s Class – James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl

Ivy’s Class – The BFG by Roald Dahl

Comparing and Contrasting. Venn Diagrams and paragraphs.  It’ s a normal thing to do with literature! But why not with music; when you have two different versions of the same song? Students compared and contrasted the original and remakes of “I Will Always Love You” and “Smooth Criminal.”  They used principles and elements of music to listen for timber, tempo, voices, and more!