August 29, 2008

Today we met our new student teacher, Miss Kepley, for the first time. She said she will be here once every Thursday for eight weeks and then every day for eight weeks after that.
To start our day, we did DOL and math. In DOL, we did correcting sentences and synonyms. In math, we started with our Daily Routines, which is just review work.

After our morning work, we opened our math book to lesson 1.4, which was on expanded notation. Expanded notation is when you take a number like 10,523 and make it 10,000 + 500 + 20 + 3.

Throughout the day, we took notes for this blog. This is the prewriting stage of the writing process. Mr. Kootman says that the better the notes you take, the easier it is to write the blog the next day.

During lunch, Tyler got hurt and went home. Boo hoo! After lunch, we read Room One. In this chapter, Ted brought food to April, who is homeless and has little money.

Then, we learned about SLANT, which reminds us to sit up, listen, and focus on the teacher. Lastly, we learned how to properly throw a tennis ball. One thing we have to remember is to face sideways from where we want to throw, also we need to lean back and shift our weight. Mr. Kootman challenged us to hit him from far away and two of us did! That was the end of our fourth day of fourth grade.

image credits:
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August 25, 2008- First Day of School!

Oh man! Summer is over and today is the first day of school. Mr. Kootman greeted us at the door and we found our nametags on the floor. We learned that every student will have his or her own number in our class. When everyone was ready, Mr. Kootman explained that some things in the classroom are tools and some are toys. We have a really cool Smartboard, which is like an electronic white board. This is definitely a tool!

After that, we learned about being responsible and taking ownership in the “Above the Line Chart.” Then we had a break where we played Autograph Bingo. Autograph Bingo is when people sign your paper if they have done certain things, such as having a dog.

All of a sudden, it began to rain for the first time in months! Luckily, we still got to go to recess. After recess, we learned about our new class blog and took notes. Then we talked about our homework and received a lot of papers for our parents to sign.

Next, we went to lunch where they served corndogs and quesadillas. At 1:05 we read Room One, by Andrew Clements. This book is about a boy named Ted who likes to solve mysteries.

Finally, we switched in to math mode, where we studied place value. We learned there are three ways to write a number: word form, standard form and expanded form. At last, we got our bags and headed out.

Photo credits: http://www.saynotocrack.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/rain.jpg

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