What’s Happening in Science — Week of 2/17/14

I hope everyone enjoyed our snow!! My family sure did, and now I am ready for some spring weather!!

This week in Science we will be doing what I had planned for us to do last week. On Monday we reviewed our Chapter 9 Vocabulary Words, had catch-up time on notebooks, and watched a Bill Nye Video on Erosion. I will be checking notebooks thru Wednesday. More information about this is in the post below on the blog. These notebooks count as a test grade. Tomorrow we will have an altered schedule because of Senior Play. On Wednesday we will FINALLY take our Chapter 9 test! I feel like we have been on this chapter forever!!

On Thursday and Friday we will be doing a mini-lesson on the Three R’s — Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. 

Ch 9 Notebook Check 2/17/14

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This is our Ch 9 rubric for our notebook check. Due to our crazy snow week last week, I’m giving our 4th graders some extra time to finish. I will be checking our notebooks on Monday – Wednesday as they finish. Last day for notebook checks will be on Wednesday as we test. Notebook check is equivalent to a test grade.

Volcano Booklet 2/6/14

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Volcanoes!! 🙂

Isn’t this a cute booklet? I found this on the Internet at crayola.com. I’ve included the link here for anyone interested. I thought it was a cute learning tool plus an easy Daily Work grade for our 4th graders this week!! 🙂 I have a funny story to share today. Kids are SO honest — they keep me on my toes with their questions and thoughts!! So one of my darlings today said that I was a much better at coloring than drawing!! 🙂 I agreed with him wholeheartedly — drawing is not my talent, but I try my best at it just like I want them all to do in their notebooks.

After learning all about volcanoes yesterday, we had LOTS of fourth graders curious about volcanoes in the United States. So today we viewed the Top 10 most dangerous volcanoes in the United States .. very interesting!! This link is here. Anybody up for a field trip out west?

I also showed this cool National Geographic Volcanoes 101 video to our classes — here.

NB 81 2/5/14

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This is our last notebook page that we will add for Chapter 9. Notebook checks will be on Wednesday/Thursday of next week, and I will be grading Notebook pages 75 – 81. I will snap a picture of our notebook rubric on Monday of next week and add to the blog.

Lesson 3 of Chapter 9 began with the important question — How can Earth’s surface change rapidly? This led to the inspiration behind our notebook page. We discussed things that could cause Earth’s surface to change rapidly — tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, landslides, avalanches, earthquakes, volcanoes, fires, etc. Students were given time to choose at least 2 and illustrate them. On the bottom of the page we discussed things that caused Earth’s surface to change slowly as a review of Lessons 1 and 2.

W.E.D. NB 80

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I found this cute illustration on Pinterest over the summer, and I knew that I would have to include it in our Science class this year. Weathering, erosion, and deposition are hard concepts to understand, and I thought this illustration would help our 4th graders learn the material.

I’ve included these key words on our vocabulary definitions on our test so students can easily recognize the definitions.
Weathering — “breaks it”
Erosion — “carries it”
Deposition — “drops it”

Weathering NB 79 1/29/14

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In case you haven’t heard — we have a 2.5 delay in the morning due to weather. This means our school day will start at 10:30!! 🙂

Today in Science we completed Lesson 1. We discussed how physical and chemical weathering affect landforms. We contrasted the two types of weathering on notebook page 79. I snapped a pic of a student example. We will have 3 test questions from today’s material. Study Guides will go home next week.