The students have been learning about simple, series, and parallel circuits in science. The students used this knowledge to improvise a dance with a group to showcase the parts of a particular circuit and how those parts work within the circuit. The students had to explain what part of the circuit they portrayed in the dance and how they were important to the circuit. See if you can find the connectors, loads, switches, and power sources in our videos. Click the links below to see a video of each circuit dance.

Parallel Circuit

Series Circuit

Simple Circuit

The students have spent time this week learning about circuits. They learned about open an closed circuits, and how electricity works. They even got a chance to experience circuits first hand. They really enjoyed figuring out what makes the light bulb light, and discovering the role of each piece of equipment.

Students learned a dance to help them demonstrate our science terms! After discussing that friction can help or hinder dancing, the students danced barefoot so they wouldn’t slide, but their pants could help them spin. The students showed momentum and inertia by running around their partner and having their partner stop them from moving. They have learned that velocity is the speed and a change in direction.  While dancing, the student ran towards the front of the room, and then split off to do a leap! There are a lot of examples of force, acceleration, momentum, inertia, friction, and velocity. Can you spot it in our video? These fourth graders can explain it!  CLICK on the link to watch! Forces and Motion Dance

Students traveled to the Lauren Rogers Museum of Arts to visit the Dale Chihuly Venetians Exhibit. Chihuly is famous for his blown glass art pieces and interesting designs. During our visit we learned about Chihuly’s training and the process of glass blowing. After viewing the exhibit, students created their own art pieces by decorating cups and plates and heating them in an oven to create a molded sculpture. Following the field trip, we challenged our students to replicate Dale Chihuly’s work using measurement conversions. Check back soon to see how our replicas turned out!

If you would like to visit the Chihuly exhibit, it will be at the Lauren Rogers Museum in Laurel until June 5th! This exhibit is free to the public!

Students wrote a poem in centers this week with a partner and created a piece of art to represent the poem. We looked at some of Alison Strine’s artwork and wanted to replicate her style using our poems as the theme. Students first glued newspaper to a piece of cardboard, chose their background color, and then painted over the newspaper. Next, students cut different pictures out of magazines to create an image that represented what their poem was about. They made a collage using the magazine cuts and glued it on the center of the cardboard. Finally, students picked an important line or phrase from their poem, typed the words, and then glued them on their cardboard. It was a fun project and we were very pleased with the final product!

Our students are studying poetry. We are learning about the different types of poetry, as well as the elements of a poem. Students chose a vocabulary word from this weeks list and wrote poems that help emphasize the meaning of the vocabulary word. They did such a fantastic job capturing the meaning of each vocabulary word and expressing it using imagery, figurative language, and rhyme. Here are just a couple of the wonderful poems created:

The past two weeks we have been reading this book called Just Grace Goes Green, and we have learned all about how we need to take better care of the Earth. In the book, Grace and her friends have to come up with a “green” project to show how they can do their part to help the planet. Our students also got the opportunity to come up with their own “green” project just like the characters in the book. Below are some very creative examples that some of the students came up with to reuse items in a new way.

A Birdfeeder

                                                            A Picture Frame

A Car

While studying about conservation and reading our class novel Just Grace Goes Green, the students built “Something out of Nothing” with reusable materials. Our something that we made was a robot! But of course we didn’t just build a robot, we challenged them by making them find equivalent fractions in order to collect their robot parts! We gave them a fraction for their body, arms, legs, nose, and eyes, and they were to use their knowledge of multiplying or dividing to find four other equivalent fractions from their Time to Show What You Know handout for their parts. This was also a race! The groups that accurately completed the challenge were able to be more selective with their choosing of parts of reusable materials!

The students learned about the artwork of Andy Warhol and his Pop Art creations. Students learned how Warhol used repetition and inverted colors to showcase popular people and things from a particular time. The students replicated his art style while working with patterns in function tables.

The fourth grade students had the opportunity to renact the election process. Each class nominated two students to represent their class in the fourth grade election for class president. The candidates formed campaign parties with their peers, made posters, and had a rally. Each student did a great job discussing their ideas and what would make them a great choice for president. After all of the votes were cast and tallied the fourth grade is proud to announce that the class president for the 2015-2016 school year is

Jaylen Green

We would also like to congratulate the other candidates. These students did a wonderful job on their campaigns.

Kennedy Watts

Mason McDonald

Desire McDonald

A’Jadyn Brown

and

Taniyah Breland