Ag in the classroom

Today we had a speaker from the Cook County Farm Bureau. Mrs. DeLaurentis gave the Ag in the Classroom presentation to our class. Among other things, we found out:
1. Corn is the #1 crop in Illinois
2. Soybeans are #2
3. 25% of people in Illinois are employed in agriculture!

Here is a link to some games through the farm bureau:
Cook County Farm Bureau
The presentation was very interesting and informative.

Keller State Fair

Today was our Keller State Fair. We have been working for weeks on floats, posters, and projects about the 5 regions of the United States. Our room was divided into 5 groups. Each group had to design and build a float about a state in one of the regions. Each group also made a regional poster and powerpoint presentation.

During the actual fair, we had BBQ hot dogs, chips and salsa, beignets, jello, homemade cookies, and juice. Next, we decorated patriotic t-shirts. Then, we paraded around the school with our floats and posters. All of the students in the other classrooms came out into the hallway to watch us. Finally, we spent some time playing "carnival games" and winning prizes. The whole experience was so much fun!

Busy, Busy, Busy

 We have 3 major projects going on:

Embryology - Day 13 and our chicks look great. Hopefully we will have chicks to show next week.

Reading/Language - Egg laying animal report - more info to follow

Social Studies - Keller State Fair - May 12th
Culmination of our study of the United States

Homework:
Spelling - Unit 30 due Thursday
Math - Journal 289, 290, & 292 along with Study Link 11-2
Social Studies - Weekly Sheet 30
Don't forget your State Fair $

Robie House Fieldtrip/The Wright 3

Today our class went to the Robie House in Hyde Park, IL. http://www.gowright.org/research/wright-robie-house.html
We read about the Robie House in the story The Wright 3. It was a wonderful day. Here are some comments:

"It was so beautiful, I wish it was my house." - A.
"I liked the balcony."- O
"I liked the whole house, especially the 'Invisible Man'." - A
"I wish my house was that big." - Y
"I wish my house was that cool. I want one!" - M
"I liked the art glass windows." - A
"It was awesome!" - F
"I liked the hidden front door. (I also wish FLW designed every house.)" - J
"I liked visiting the campus of the University of Chicago." - T
"I wish Frank Lloyd Wright was still alive, so that he could design my house." - A
"The Robie House is a beautiful place." - L
"The Robie House is a piece of art." - N
"The Robie House has great secrets." - B
"It was pretty." - A
"He hid stuff in his art." - C. 

"One word - AWESOME!" - A

Spring Break is Almost Here!

Highlights from the week:

We have the top AR point earner in our class: 219 points!!!

We are experimenting with series and parallel circuits in Science.




Many children in our class wore green for St. Patrick's Day.

In math we are working on changing fractions to decimals and percents - we even get to use the calculator to figure out some of them:)

We are reading an AWESOME novel, The Wright 3. We have read 19 of the 34 chapters already. It is so exciting. We are really looking forward to our Robie House fieldtrip. Check out this link:
The Wright 3 - website of activities

ISATs are here

Today we took our 1st ISAT test. One down - 7 to go:)
Take a practice test:
ISAT Practice Tests

Other interesting things to note:

• We are working on our endangered animal reports using Comic Life.
• We are writing an essay on friendship.
• During a lesson on "Mystery Circuits," we were visited by our District Administrators.  They had a great time in our class and were very impressed by the children's knowledge.

Study...Study...Study

Notes from today:

Thank you to our PTO for bringing in the "Live Egyptian Animals" Assembly. We enjoyed being able to see the snakes, cats, scorpion, hedgehog, and cayman:) Some of them were so cute! - no- not the snakes and scorpion:)

We also talked about population and population maps.
For 2 tickets: What is the "census" and how does it relate to our discussion of population?
http://2010.census.gov/2010census/how/index.php
http://www.census.gov/schools/census_for_kids/

Math test tomorrow - Chapter 6
Spelling - Review unit 18
Social Studies - Chapter 5 Test on Thursday

Here's what we are up to in class this week:

Reading - We have been discussing elements of Tall Tales and Drawing Conclusions.

Language - We are working with Verbs (action/linking) and Subject/Verb agreement.
                -  We are also working with our Reading/Language specialist who is helping us practice      extended responses in preparation for our state tests.

Spelling - unit 17 /j/  dge and ge spellings

Math - We are practicing various methods of long division as well as learning about coordinate graphing. Test 6 is next week

Science - We are studying Force of Attraction. It is part of our Magnetism and Electricity module. Check out the website for more information, resources, and activities.
http://www.fossweb.com/modules3-6/MagnetismandElectricity/index.html 

Social Studies - We are studying the Northeast region of the United States.

We are also going to participate in the Illinois Council on Economic Education Poster Contest.
http://www.econed-il.org/icee/econposter.shtml

- 2009 winners can be viewed at:
http://www.econed-il.org/icee/econposter_09.shtml

Reminder - Book orders are due tomorrow. The orders can also be placed online (check previous post for instructions).

It's Been Awhile...

We're back...

It has been awhile since our last post.
Many exciting things have been going on in our class lately:

We were visited by Geologist, from the University of Chicago. He brought in various objects related to his field, and talked with us about his job. Some children even got to try on his equipment:)


We were also visited by our 4th grade GATE Teacher today. She introduced some logic puzzles and Sudoku strategies. Here are links to some fun puzzle sites:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/math/logic/puzzles/
http://www.sudokuessentials.com/sudoku_for_kids.html

Parents, book orders can be completed online if you are interested. A letter went home today explaining the process. Here is a quick link to the site, along with the user name/password for our class.

www.scholastic.com/bookclubs

User Name:     lmaurer4_1
Password:     Keller 

Enjoy the long weekend!