Ms. McGann's 3rd & 4th Grade: Scrapbook

April 7

It has taken QUITE a long time, but we are finally pleased to share our 3rd-4th grade A-Z books! The project gave them plenty of practice with both research skills and paragraph writing. After choosing a topic of interest, students were grouped and the work began. We started by writing a class page, then students broke into groups and helped each other with their next page. Slowly, we worked our way to students writing individual paragraphs, and I am so pleased with how much their paragraph writing skills have improved as they've worked on their books! Once we finished typing the drafts we worked on finding photos and inserting them the right way (not stretching them out!) The class was so excited to see the first printed draft, which they then revised and edited. The excitement level was even higher when we finally unveiled the final copies! It was a great discussion about having a sense of pride in a job well done!

We have the printed copies in our classroom, but you are welcome to read our digital versions online with the links below.

Land Animals

Space

Endangered Animals

March 11

In science, we have been learning about animal adaptations. We randomly picked animals from a list of "70 Cool Animals" to see if we could determine their physical and behavioral adaptations. Check out what we learned by viewing our slideshow!

January 28

It's presentation week! Or at least that's what it felt like in 3rd/4th grades this week. We finished up two big projects and had plenty of presentations!

We started by presenting our independent reading book shares. After reading an independent book and jotting their thoughts along the way, students reviewed the book and created a Google Slide presentation. They had to write a book blurb, introduce us to the main and supporting characters and setting, make connections (text to text, text to self), dig a little deeper into their characters, and share their recommendations. When it came time to present, we talked about what makes a good presentation. Projecting, eye contact, talking to your audience instead of reading off a paper/screen, being confident in your work were some of the skills we were focusing on. Below are a few snapshots of their presentations.

We also presented our Iroquois projects in Social Studies. Each group of students researched 4 different aspects of Iroquois life and wrote paragraphs to explain what they learned. In order to teach their information to the rest of the class, they had to act out one topic, draw another, create an artifact for the third, and simply read their paragraph for the 4th. It was interesting to hear all of the connections between the presentations as different groups shared their work!

The Three Sisters: Corn, Beans and Squash

Clothing: Dress, shirt, and moccasin

Transportation: Birch bark & dugout canoes, moccasins

Outside of a longhouse

Inside of a longhouse

Wampum: Hiawatha's Belt

January 20

In science, we started a unit on simple machines. We've learned about the parts of simple machines and how they help us. We've done some hands-on experiments with levers, wheels & axles, pulleys, and inclined planes. Using spring scales, we actually measured the force it takes to move different objects with and without these simple machines!

December 22

This week was "Fact Frenzy" week where we spent every math class focused on facts in all operations. The highlight was our U-Know games, similar to Uno but with a math fact twist! Today we mixed things up and did a snowglobe math glyph. Each student used their personal numbers to complete math tasks which gave them information about what to draw in their snowglobe.

I hope everyone has a wonderful break and a happy new year!

December 21

We used a new type of scale today to measure force: spring scales. We reviewed what we remembered about Isaac Newton's laws and learned that the unit Newton's is named after him! We will continue to use these scales as we learn about more simple machines.

December 10

We started our unit on simple machines by talking about forces such as push, pull, and gravity. We also talked about friction, and what high or low friction surfaces do to the amount of force you need to move something. After doing some experiments to find out what surfaces were high or low friction surfaces, each pair of students was given the task of creating a themed maze. Their maze had to have "prizes" which were guarded by high friction, and "traps" which were guarded by low friction.

After creating a quick sketch of their maze, they had to measure carefully and create a draft that their marble could move through.

The next step was to measure and draw their walls into their maze box.

Once a check was completed to make sure a marble would be able to get through all of the corners, more measuring and cutting was done to create the maze walls out of straws.

Once the walls were in place, it was time to add the prizes, traps, and friction surfaces.

On the last day, we invited Mrs. Vitale to join us to test the mazes.

November 30

Another 3rd-5th activity this week, but today we made latkes! They worked hard grating, squeezing, and mixing, but the results were worth it!

November 23

We got together with the fifth-grade class to do a dancing raisins STEM activity today!

November 10

Both grades were working on metric measurement in their math units, so we did lots of hands-on practice with rulers, meter sticks, pan balances, triple-beam balances, digital scales, and graduated cylinders. Third-graders were working on getting a personal sense of different measurements and practicing using the tools, while fourth-graders were moving on to more complex concepts such as 10, 100 or 1,000 times more.

October 29

Happy Halloween! We spent the morning revealing our monster exchange writing & drawing project and completing a math "Party Planning" task with the 5th graders. Our afternoon was a Halloween obstacle course in the gym followed by the parade and party.

October 22

We met with the 5th graders again this Friday for another STEM investigation. This time, we wanted to find out what would happen to candy corn if it was placed in different solutions. After learning what a solution was, got to work setting up the investigation. We made our hypothesis, observed the changes, and recorded our results. Ask your child about the results, and if you end up with candy corn this Halloween that you don't want to eat, maybe you can find another solution to experiment with!

In other news, Mrs. Cooper shared this photo with me of the 3rd-5th graders in gym class. They were doing a teamwork challenge where they had to throw their scarf in the air while walking in a circle and catch the scarf from the person in front of them! Mrs. Cooper was impressed with how well they accomplished the challenge!

October 20

We have been talking a LOT about maps so far this year. We reviewed the continents and oceans of the world and added a reference map to our binders. We also spent some time exploring New York state maps. The students tried to find different cities and landforms and add them to a blank map. Then, we worked together to create a reference map of New York state, the surrounding areas, and major cities, rivers, lakes, and mountains. Many students have recognized that they don't know all of the information on these two maps, and they've started to set IGNITE goals to be able to label the maps. Some have also challenged themselves to learn all 50 states on a map! If your child sets one of these IGNITE goals, there are games on the Bitmoji map room that they can play to help them learn their geography!

October 15

The Schenectady County Fire Department visited Brown School to speak with the students about fire safety.

October 13

We have met with the 5th-grade class the past two Fridays to complete a glue STEM lab! Our goals were to find out how much glue you need to hold two pieces of paper together and which kind of glue was best.

First, we made our hypotheses for test one about how much glue we would need to hold half sheets of paper together. The range was 4 dots to 29 dots. After carefully placing dots of glue on the papers and leaving them to dry, we wrote down any observations we had so far.

This test was to see which type of glue would work best. After hypothesizing, we again got to gluing. This time it was 4 dots on each paper while also recording the type of glue used. Again, these were left to dry while we jotted down our observations.

The following week, we started by discussing what we considered successful in terms of keeping the papers together. The students brought up ideas about how well it stuck, if the glue had oozed out or wrinkled the paper, and if there was any chance it be taken apart without ruining it in case a mistake had been made. They also talked about not wanting to waste any glue. Overall, we decided that either 6 or 14 dots was good, but 4 and 29 were not good results.

Next, we tested the types of glue. We all agreed that our test would be mindfully using one finger to try to separate the paper gently. The groups sorted their papers into glues they thought were good, okay, or bad.

We then came together to combine our data, rank the glues, and see if we could draw any conclusions from our experiment. Overall, we felt that liquid glue worked better than glue sticks, but the brand didn't really matter too much.

October 4

As part of both science and mindfulness, we've been studying the brain! We started by learning 3 main parts of the brain and what they do: the hippocampus, amygdala, and prefrontal cortex. We then moved on to reading additional books about the brain which taught us about other parts of the brain and some interesting fun facts! One of the parts we learned about was neurons. We made a human chain of neurons to transfer information across the room using our nerve endings, axons, and dendrites.

We are moving on to discussions about mindful behaviors (using your prefrontal cortex to make a decision and then act mindfully), using our senses mindfully (being fully aware of the sense that you are using at the time), and mindful awareness (being present in the moment without judgment). We're learning that being mindful is about more than just making a good choice, it's also allowing yourself to just be in the moment and not stress about what is coming in the future (that is judging). We're also practicing mindful breathing to help ourselves be more mindfully aware.

If you want to learn more about the brain, here is a short video of the brain facts display we created for the outside of our classroom door.

September 23

In social studies, we are learning about non-fiction text features and how they can help us understand what we are reading. We covered the table of contents, glossary, photograph, illustration, diagram with labels, caption, index, headings, tables, and graphs.

To make it a bit more interesting, we became doctors who were helping patients in need of different features! First, we spent a day creating a reference page for our reference binder and looking for examples of different text features in our social studies textbook.

Next, the new doctors looked at their patient files. They read each patient's chart to see what text feature would be most helpful, using their reference binder to help them. When they were done with their patient files, they read through a non-fiction article on donuts.

Day three was surgery day. Before surgery, the doctors needed to ensure that they had all of their surgery tools cleaned! Who knew wiping down scissors and glue was so much fun!

Next, our surgeons scrubbed in for surgery! Again, this was the most fun they've had handwashing, and they were excited to share with everyone in the hallway what they were up to!

After donning gloves, the surgeons got to work transplanting text features from the donut article to the various patients based on what they had decided earlier.

Once the patients had healed (or rather the patient files dried), the doctors completed their post-op reports, reviewing why each text feature was chosen.

If you see text features in a non-fiction text, be sure to ask your surgeon (i.e. student) about it! Hopefully, they can tell you how it is useful in helping you navigate or understand the text!

September 21

Here are the second attempts at mindful observations and drawings of Mr. Potato Head. What an improvement our scientists made! We've also transferred the idea of adding more detail to our reader's responses where we have been practicing drawing the mental images (mind movies) that we are making as we listen to our read-aloud novel "Poppy."

September 17

Good scientists use mindful seeing! They observe details closely and record what they are seeing. We did an initial observation of a Mr. Potato Head and drew what we saw. Will our next observations be more detailed? Keep an eye on this page to find out!