Welcome to 2017!!!

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Welcome back to a new year!  It was a great December, full of celebration and fun! Now, as January chills our bodies, our minds must heat up with lots of new learning!

Math:  We are onto Unit 4, which now combines all four operations (+-x/) in solving story problems.  We are learning beginning algebra and how fun that can be!

Writing:  We continue to write personal essays and we are learning the formal structure that supports writing a good essay.  Literary essays are the final portion of this unit which we are aiming to get to by the end of this month.

Reading:  In combining our unit of informational reading with our social studies unit on government, it makes for some great classroom discussions on how our government works and why we can have faith in it!  We also get to see how informational writing has different structures used to convey information to the reader.

Science:  Mr. Bowen is teaching away on the Sun, Moon, and Earth unit!  Ask your students about what they are learning and let me know if you have any questions!

Keep up that reading every night and MobyMax fluency practice!  We are seeing great gains in all of our students!  Thanks for sending me such a SUPER-DUPER bunch of KIDS!!

A Final Wrap Up Before Christmas!

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christmas-cookies Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!  Have a wonderful, safe holiday!

Just a few things:

Unit 3 Math Test will be started tomorrow (12/20).  We are doing the regular division problems on the test in the morning.  The harder story problems will be reviewed and tested after we get back from our Christmas break.

Science Test in Mrs. H’s Class – will be held off until we get back from break. We will review on the Tuesday we get back and take the test on Weds., Jan 4th.  The same is true for Mrs. Huizenga’s class in my classroom.

Christmas Party tomorrow (12/20) at 2:15!  See you there if you are coming to help with the party!  Please park at Baldwin Middle School if our parking lot is full.  Due to the snow, we have lost some parking.

Wednesday 12/21 is PJ and electronics day!! We have earned it!  So students may bring in their favorite electronics item and they will be locked up when we are not using them, as we have before!  Remind your student that they are solely responsible for their electronic on the bus though, and should not take them out of their backpacks until they get home.

We are also showing Finding Dory as a fun celebration for the whole fourth grade that afternoon!  Finding Dory has been approved by the Dove Family Film Foundation.  If you would like to know more about it, the link is here: http://www.dove.org/review/11923-finding-dory/ .  If you are not ok with your student watching this movie, just let me know and they can sit out with another type of activity.

Have a wonderful Christmas!

 

 

Science Enrichment Week!

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science

Hi there Families and Friends!

We have a great science enrichment week planned for our 4th graders!!  Today, we have presenters coming from the Blandford Nature Center! They will be bringing along some live animals and talking to our students about animal adaptations.

Tomorrow, Tuesday Apr. 19, we take a trip to Hemlock Crossings County Park to study wetlands, forests, and watersheds!

Thursday, Apr. 21, the Hope College Science Department is coming to study about the phases of matter!

Friday, Apr. 22, Consumer’s Energy presents their “EmPowered Kids” program.

It’s going to be a great week!

4th Grade Grant Money!

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moneyGRANT MONEY FOR 4TH GRADE!
Hi Parents,
Mr. Bowen needs your vote to win a Thank America’s Teachers grant from Farmer’s Insurance Company. Mr. Bowen is looking to earn a $2,500 prize for purchasing science equipment that will affect every student as they pass through fourth grade here at Georgetown in the future. Please cast your votes at the following link: http://bit.ly/1OLH8KP.  Once there, type in “Bowen” under teacher and then click on his box below.  In order to validate that you are a real person, they send you an email.  Just click on that and you are confirmed.

Please vote once every day for the rest of the month of March for Mr. Bowen! It takes a matter of seconds to vote, and you can help us earn a grant to purchase more science materials.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU!!!

Happy January!

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winter2Hope everyone is enjoying the winter wonderland we live in! I haven’t posted in a while, so I thought I’d better catch up!

We have been hard at work writing personal essays and now we are learning to write “literary” essays. This is a skill that can be challenging for fourth graders! They are learning to determine the “big idea” of a piece of literature, and then to defend their thinking by providing “evidence” from within the writing. Everyone is doing a great job and soon they will be turning in their final essay.

In math, we are now moving on to a unit of story problems involving all operations. These are important because they involve everyday, “real-world” math situations, in which they have to determine the math operations (often more than one!) to use to solve the problem.  Again, as with their writing, this involves a lot of critical thinking skills! The students are learning to talk about how they are thinking with each other.  This inspires each thinker to see things in ways they might not have seen before!

Tuesday, January 26th is the date set for the science test on matter! Students will be coming home with flashcards today to practice.  Watch for a review sheet tomorrow (Friday, Jan. 22) to start working with your student studying for the test.  Next week, students will be switching classrooms for their next science unit! Students love getting to know the other fourth grade teachers and WE love getting to know them!

Two last dates to know are the next spelling quiz is on January 29th, and our Valentine’s Party will be February 12th at 2:30 pm.  Students will be making their own valentine’s boxes for a contest if they choose (completely optional to be a part of the contest!!!!).  Otherwise, I will provide a bag for them to decorate and put their valentines in.  So start searching online for that cute valentine’s box to make if you choose!

Stay warm!!!  -Love, Mrs. Q

 

Mr. Bowen’s Classroom

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pumpkimWe are switching for science and learning about the atmosphere. Mr.Bowen throws you mints if you answer a question right. He also loves to draw. He told us that he loves to sing. He gave us a science packet and we have been doing a lot of predictions. We did a prediction with gravity where he dropped a tissue and we had to make a prediction with gravity. Then he jumped and we had to compare where he jumps and where the tissue landed. He has dice in  a jar and shakes the jar to get our attention.

By: Mary

Science is a Hair-Raising Experience!!

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By Ethan G, Reporter
Chapter 1
Today at science, we learned about mixtures.  We were going to bring in some snacks and then we were going to mix them up to make a mixture.  We had a lots, lots, and lots of snacks!   There were probably 19 snacks!

There were Cheerios, Goldfish, pretzels, vanilla wafers, cranberries, Cheese Its, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, raisins, oyster crackers, Captain Crunch, Apple Jacks, Frosted Toast Crunch, Fruity Pebbles, cheese pretzels, Strawberry Cheerios, and Teddy Grahams.

Chapter 2
Today we learned about using static electricity to sort a mixture.  Mrs Q blew up a balloon and rubbed it on our heads.  She had some salt and pepper on a plate.  She put the balloon almost on the plate and all the pepper went on the balloon!  I do not know why the salt did not go up!

We learned a lot in science this week!

We Love to Experiment!!

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Science has begun in Mrs. Q’s room, with our first topic being Matter!!  We have been discussing the various properties of matter, and today we did an experiment with sinking and floating.  First, we discussed the properties of the items we were testing.  Next, we put them in water to see which objects would sink and which would float!  We filled in our lab sheets with data just like real scientists!  Here are a few pictures of our experiment!