Aftercare at Knollwood School by Thomas

Aftercare is a place you can stay if your parents have to work. Miss Rose and Mr. Russoniello run Aftercare.

When we're all done with homework, we go to the APR (that means All Purpose Room). You can bring water, snacks, and money for the vending machine.

It's placed at Knollwood School in Fair Haven, New Jersey, from 3 to 6pm. It's in room 107 on the first floor of the building.

Gym at Knollwood School by Caroline

Running, throwing, catching...they're all part of one special: Gym. At Gym currently, we are in our basketball unit. In this unit we are dribbling, passing, shooting, and hustling.

If it is a very nice day out, we might go outside and play Capture the Flag. It's when there are two sides of the field and each side has a jail and a ball box. Everyone starts with four balls. To win you need to have all eight balls in your ball box.

Gym is really exciting. We go to it every Tuesday from 2:00 to 3:00.

Recess at Knollwood School by Thomas

Recess at Knollwood School is one of the best periods of the day. It is fun when it's raining and fun when it's sunny. Some of the things you can do on an indoor day are Cup Stacking, Art Room, and games.

Some of the things you can do on an outdoor day are Capture the Flag, soccer, football, basketball, and going out to lunch.

(Note from the teachers: the photos above were chosen by Thomas and show Sportsman's Field, the location of outdoor recess.)

Math Olympiad by Cate

Today, the day after Thanksgiving break, some 4th and 5th graders showed up at room 206 for Math Olympiad! It's great for people who love and are very interested in math. So if you want to go, I bet you're going to be great!

What We Do in Running Club by Cece

Running Club is on Mondays from 3:00 to 4:00 after school. What you do is you run to Meadow Ridge and around the figure eight. Then you run back to Knollwood. I suggest that you bring a water bottle because you get thirsty (but they do give you Gatorade at the end). Everyone goes at different paces, so you can find someone who goes the same pace as you and run with them. You can also walk if you get tired. If you like running and think that you want to do this, then you can sign up next year.

Tin Foil, Sink or Float by Mac

In science, Room 101 has been making tin foil boats.

First, we cut tin foil and shaped it into a boat.

Next, we filled up a bucket with water and tested the boats to see if they float.

Then, we put marbles in the boats to see how many marbles the boat could hold without sinking. I found that my "4x4" boat could hold 10 marbles before sinking.

(Note from the teachers: in the video above, Mac demonstrates how the tin foil boats were tested and explains the effect that surface area has on an object's buoyancy.)

Digging Deep in Our Reading: A Look at Some Charts

Perhaps the most important purpose for the charts we create with students during mini-lessons is that they become a tool for students to independently try the strategies that have been taught. An important part of the reading unit we've just finished (a unit that focused on characters and in which we also learned how to negotiate reading  and talking about a book with a partner) has been digging deep through writing, talking, and thinking about our reading.

Picture this: a mosquito skims the surface of McCarter Pond, maybe causing a little ripple in the water but, really, making no impact. Then, there's a duck that goes completely into the water, splashing around, even diving deep, down to the bottom, to try and find some food.

Earlier this fall, we related this image to our reading. We have a choice. We can choose to be mosquito readers, skimming the surface of our books, going quickly from page to page or book to book, not pausing to think deeply about our reading. Readers who read like mosquitoes aren't changed by their reading. Or we could read like ducks, digging deep into our books by stopping to think, talk, and write about our reading. In this way, we'd read in a way that allows books to change us, to give us new ideas.

Thinking, talking, and writing deeply isn't an easy task. Simply: it's hard. It's easier to stick to the plot of the story, missing the chance to really have ideas. What's harder (and, therefore, as fourth graders in our room know, has bigger pay-off for a reader) is to really dig deep, thinking about our ideas and supporting them with textual evidence.

We've been learning when to stop, think, write, and talk about our reading and also how to do this most effectively. We'd like to share the charts we've been using in class so that it may support talking about reading in a deeper way at home. Our readers have had a lot of practice borrowing phrases off of the chart and using them as they think, write, and talk more deeply about their reading; we are sure they'd be happy to teach you how to use the charts.

The first chart is a chart that helps readers know when it often pays off to do some writing about their reading. The column on the left lists (some of) these different times; the column on the right gives a vision for different ways the writing about reading at that stopping point could go.

The second chart is from our character unit and shows some of the strategies taught during mini-lessons. Under each strategy are a few post-its that students have been using as they've done their own writing and talking about reading.

Hope this helps you dig deeper in your talk with your child about his or her reading. Now, we're on to nonfiction reading!

Things Room 101 Is Thankful For

Today, the day before Thanksgiving, we published a class poem titled Things Room 101 Is Thankful For. Our poem is a list poem, inspired by Georgia Heard's Falling Down the Page, and used parts of the thankful lists we've been keeping in our writer's notebooks for the last week and a half.

 The published poem hanging outside our classroom door.

Writers in our room chose items off their thankful list, decided what kind of punctuation they'd want to include within and at the end of their line, and also made decisions about where to place their line (their sentence strip) in relation to the line above theirs in the poem.

Please enjoy the video below, which includes the sound of our first-read of the poem (turn your volume up:) and photos of each line as they were added to the poem.

Room 101 feels like there is a lot to be thankful for and we hope you do, too. Happy Thanksgiving!

Math Games Fun by Nick

The games in math are fun, like Polygon Pair-Up, Name that Number, and other fun stuff.

A lot of kids in our clas like the math games.

When Mrs. Mills or Mrs. Barnett say it's time to play Polygon Pair-Up, I like to play it.

(Note from the teachers: the video above is a video Nick made to demonstrate a round of Name that Number.)

Thirteen Ways of Getting Through a Hurricane

Hey Fourth Graders (and Mrs. Barnett!),

How are you doing? I've been thinking about you all week, wondering how you're doing. I (probably obviously, since I'm able to do this blog post), have power back, and am wishing, wishing, wishing it back on in Fair Haven for you all.

I'm sure you have Burning Story Ideas you've been adding to your WNB at home, that you've been enjoying the unexpected time with your family and friends. I'm anxious to get back to school and hear your stories.

Some people on Facebook update their status each day in November with something they're thankful for. We'll each start our own thankful list in our WNB as soon as we're back (you can, of course, start it before we're back if you want!).

Until then, though, I wanted to share a poem that I've been working on. Coreen, my best friend, suggested that we use a poem called Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird by Wallace Stevens as a mentor to write our own poems about how we've gotten through the blackout and Hurricane Sandy.

So, I'm including my poem at the end of this post- maybe we'll all write our own next week as a writing homework. It would be fun to see how we all got through this hurricane.

See you soon!

Thirteen Ways of Getting Through a Hurricane

Invite neighbors over

who you’ve meant to have over,

but haven’t yet,

and play card games

by the candlelight.

Sleep in.

Pull all the candles out,

from every drawer

and cabinet

and shelf

and move them around with you,

from kitchen to family room,

to light your way.

Make two trips to 711 to call family:

Cell phones aren’t working.

All’s ok.

Use spaghetti noodles

to light the gas stove

and cook whatever’s

thawed in the freezer

(it will be bad by tomorrow).

Download new books

on your kindle

and read them

under two blankets

because it’s chilly

without the heat.

Hold your breath

and scrub

fast,

fast,

fast,

in an ice cold shower.

Then sprint back

to the aforementioned

two blankets.

Nap.

Take walks through town.

When the nights seem

to be creeping by,

move to Derek’s Jeep,

charge phones

(still not working, but just in case…),

plug the laptop in,

and watch Parenthood episodes.

Take a trip to Sickles

and stock up on “necessities”:

salad,

turkey sloppy joe's,

mashed potatoes,

sandwich,

caramel chocolate popcorn.

Do a celebration dance

when the power

comes

back

on.

The Big Trip by William

Fourth grade had their yearly field trip to the Liberty Science Center. We had a blast. There was all sorts of exhibits.

One of the most enjoyed exhibits was the Touch Tunnel. The Touch Tunnel is where you go in this black room and try to find your way out. The people on the outside can see you with these special cameras that are in the room. A tip is to keep your right hand on the right wall.

After lunch we went to this big dome-like room. We watched a movie called an IMAX movie. It was really cool, it was like 3D without the glasses. If you stood up you felt really dizzy! The movie was called "Amazing Caves."

If you want to learn more, go to www.lsc.org.

Independent Projects - Launched!

On Monday, Room 101 was abuzz with excitement over independent writing projects.

Students brainstormed possibilities for a chart of what writing can become and filled out proposals for their projects. Proposals required writers to name the topic and genre of their piece, plan their notebook work (pre-drafting work), choose mentor texts (published texts in the same genre as their project), and choose a tentative due date. Students spent writing workshop on Tuesday and Wednesday beginning to work on their independent projects.

The photo above shows the brainstorming the writers in Room 101 did about possible independent projects. (Click to see a larger, easier to read image:)

The work of independent projects is so valuable because students are able to explore an often new genre they are interested in and take themselves independently through the writing process. Some of the independent projects our writers are undertaking include: comics, plays, sports programs, picture books, fantasy stories, and interviews.

As we enter into this new world of balancing two writing pieces (independent projects and our class genre piece, currently realistic fiction), we will be learning that it's important that we do not rush through our realistic fiction work to get to our independent projects. Instead, we will use independent projects to help fill our writing time with writerly activities. One way students will show that they are balancing their writing work is through their plan box, which shows their own, individual, plan for writing workshop each day. Students may choose to work on independent projects as one of the three activities in their plan box.

In Room 101, the feeling is, indeed, that there is so much writing to be done.

Writing Celebration by Andrew

This week we had our first writing celebration. We were able to bring in our published stories. Some even had drawings in them! We left our stories on our desk and a piece of paper so that we can give compliments on what we read.

We also had a paper that we could put Golden Lines on. Golden Lines are when we pick out our favorite line and write it on the piece of paper. Our stories were Personal Narratives, true stories from our lives. Some were about sporting events, family events, and special events. This was a great day because we all got to read each of our friends' stories!

(Note from the teachers: The video above was complied by Andrew and shows our pieces being read during our celebration.)

What We Do at Art! by Aloka

At Art, we do so many fun and interesting things. We learn about 3D drawings, overlapping, cubism, and so much more interesting things. We also make skeletons out of paper, straw, and glue, we sketch whatever we want, we paint, color, trace people and SO MUCH MORE.

Art is great for expressing your imagination. What else would have made video games video games? Without art, there would be no video games! And I know a lot of people like video games very much.

(Note from the teachers: the video above contains photos that were taken or drawn and edited into a movie by Aloka. Caroline assisted with some of the sound effects and narration.)

411 on Science by Ellie

Room 101 has been up to some work in science. We have been working with K'NEX and making vehicles to study Motion and Design. So far, we have made a custom and a standard vehicle. We test standard and custom vehicles with washers, rubber bands, and just pushing it.

We used the washers to pull the string connected to the car by dropping it. We used the rubber band another time by harnessing the rubber band to the front bar and wrapping it around the rear rod to make it go. Also, we just pushed it.

That's what room 101 has been up to in science.

(Note from the teachers: the video above demonstrates how to use rubber band energy to make a vehicle move. This vehicle has been customized to hold a sail, as our upcoming investigations are focused on the effects of air resistance on a vehicle's motion.)

one week out!

so, in just a week, teachers will be back at school making final preparations for the new year! it's crazy, really, how fast things change; in a few weeks it will be hard to remember what it was like before this school year began, what it was like before we were a class.

here are some things we've been up to in getting ready for you:

• reading your writing pieces and reading inventories from third grade (it makes us feel like we know you a little bit already!);
• cleaning, cleaning, cleaning (it's amazing how much dust and dirt accumulate on shelves of supplies!);
• keeping an eye out for the mouse that's been living in our room (we're pretty sure he (or she!) has moved on);
• making decisions about areas for different things in our room (where writing supplies will go, where our math charts will hang);
• writing your names over and over and over again (on files, on folders, on chairs, and name tags).

we can't wait to see what you guys do on our class blog this year! we'll talk about your ideas during the first few weeks of school and then you'll have a go at it. hopefully it will help outsiders feel a little bit more connected with the hard work you're doing in our class.

we can't wait to meet you!

see you soon.