May the "fourth" be with you! Fun times in Fourth grade!

May the "fourth" be with you! Fun times in Fourth grade!
Mrs. Constantine's Class Rocks!!

Monday, January 28, 2013

Wax Museum


As part of our American history unit, each student will independently research a specific famous person from the Revolutionary time period. Each of these famous people played some part in the birth of our nation.  Each student was given a name of a person to research last week.  Research will be conducted both at school and at home. (The Public Library has lots of books on this topic.) From conducting this research, the students will learn about the different personalities and lives of unique individuals who helped in creating our nation.  As research is conducted, students will be expected to take notes to help in organizing all information collected. They were given a sample form last week that tells them specifically what they need to research.  After the research has been completed, the students will then begin working on their Wax Museum presentation. In class, each student will have to draw & paint their famous person’s face as best they can at school.  They will also begin working on a short speech to say about their person. Their speech should only be about 20-30 seconds and should explain who they are and why they are important.  Beginning next week, I will send  home drafts of information they would like to share.  Please help your child compile and memorize the final speech.  Students will need to dress up as their person might have dressed.  These attires should be created from clothing found at home and are not expected to be elaborate. The costumes are in addition to the presentation and will make the Wax Museum seem realistic and authentic. Creativity is very important and encouraged in this project. Your child will need to act as though they are their person.  Each student will present his or her speech to the class for a dress rehearsal, in their costumes, on March 4th. All speeches are to be completely memorized.  On this day they are NOT to have make-up or hair designs specific to their person.  This is to be saved for the main event on Wednesday, March 6th.   The entire fourth grade will do a Wax Museum on famous people from Pre-Colonial times all the way through the Westward Expansion time periods Wednesday, March 6th from 11:00-12:00. Our SSC friends, Parents, Grandparents, and friends will be invited to come and walk through our museum and learn about each person. This is an event you will not want to miss! Students should arrive to school with their hair and make-up ready on the morning of the 6th.  I will keep the costumes at school from the dress rehearsal and will allow students time to change before the Wax Museum.  If you would like to stay and eat lunch with your child after the Wax Museum, feel free to join them!
I intend for this research to be an enjoyable way for the students to get to know the individuals they have been reading about while studying the events of the revolution.  The students should have fun in this learning experience.  If there are any questions or problems, please do not hesitate to ask.. Thank you for your continued support!!

4th grade baby pictures for yearbook:

 In years past, we have done baby pages for fourth graders ONLY.  We plan to do the same this year, but it depends on the participation.  You can begin to submit your photos.  We ask that it be scanned and saved in jpeg format.  You can use the same eshare website to upload it.  Please put teacher and name on website (website will prompt you) so we can make sure not to mismatch pictures with children.  Deadline for baby pictures will be February 1st.  ******Please forward to Teachers and Parents*******It’s yearbook preparation time…..and we need your help!!!  Our yearbook has gone completely digital and parents and teachers have an opportunity to upload pictures to the eshare website.  We will use this library of photos to make our yearbook pages.  Attached is a copy of the step by step instructions to use the website.  (1. Go to the website www.hjeshare.com 2. Enter our school code 3014807 3. Enter your name, e-mail address, and accept the terms and conditions 4.Click on browse for images and locate where you have saved your images on your computer. You can save them in a file or insert your memory card and retrieve them that way. 5. Choose your photo and click ok to upload. You may hold your control key down and select multiple photos at once, maximum of 10 each time. 6.Once your photos have uploaded, you will be asked for some info for each photo. *****This is very important so that we will know what grade, teacher and function it is. Please enter the grade in the proper blank. For the students shown in picture, please enter the teachers name first and then you may enter the students names if you know them. If not don’t worry, just make sure we have the teachers name. For the description, please enter what function the picture was taken. (example- field trip to zoo, Halloween centers, playground, etc.) 7. Once info is entered for each picture, then you may click submit pictures and you will be done. You may go back and enter more pictures at this time.  **Guidelines to follow***Only enter pictures taken at school or at a school function. 2. Please only enter a maximum of 10 pictures from each function. If you made 50 pictures on a field trip just upload your best 10 pictures. 3. Do not attempt to edit pictures, the yearbook software will do it for us. 4. Please try to use high quality photos (8 mega pixels or higher if possible) that way your photo will not be grainy looking.  If you are a parent and would like to help with yearbook, please email me.  I am especially in need of parents willing to take photos of special events and upload pics to website.

Dates

Since so much is coming up, I wanted to post the dates that I will be adding to our class calendar just for convenience:


January 29—SSC Chick-Fil-A night at the Galleria, 5:00-8:00
February 1—Deadline to submit a baby picture of your child for the yearbook (THIS IS A VERY SPECIAL, PRECIOUS PAGE.)
February 5—Deadline for permission form and money for American Village field trip (forms go home tomorrow)
February 14—Valentine Exchange/Decorate a Shoe Box for our mailbox to collect Valentines Cards for the class can be store bought or homemade, let your child fill out a card for each classmate, attaching a candy to each card is fine.
February 15—deadline for yearbook picture submissions
February 26—American Village field trip
February 28—4th grade Beef-O-Brady’s night, 5:00-8:00 (date was incorrect in the Dolphin Echo)
March 1st-Have Wax Museum Speech memorized-sheets for this and easy costume ideas will go home next week, this will be the same person your child is doing a scrapbook on)
March 4—American History Scrapbook due
March 4—Dress Rehearsal for Wax Museum—students only, WITH costumes, but no make-up or hair design
March 6—Wax Museum from 11:00-12:00—Parents invited-Kids come to school with make-up and hair READY
March 25-29—Spring Break—schools closed
April 19—SSC Family Fun Fair, more information to come
Box Tops—Send in as soon as possible, as often as you would like
Spark for Change—we will do a service project as a class, for our school, community, or world-talk to your child and send ideas to me as soon as possible.  We will vote as a class by Friday of this week. Ideas in the past have included: collecting cans for needy families, creating a brochure for new students, making blankets for kids with cancer, collecting new playground equipment for our school’s playground, conducting random acts of kindness, a book drive for school’s affected by tornadoes, giving plants to elderly people in a nursing home, and caring for the environment and sprucing up the school’s eco-site.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

January 24

Just a quick post to share our self portraits and our Causes of the Revolution glogs. The kids did a great job!

Classroom happenings!

Reading- We are starting a new Read Aloud Wonder by R.J. Palacio. check out the review about the book on YouTube.  It's going to be a great book! We are also completing mid year reading assessments. Writing-We are working on a writing piece about Loyalists and Patriots and what side we would choose if we lived during the time of the American Revolution. I think we can really relate now that we have revolted as a class against the Starbursts!! We will publish on our blogs, so make sure to read our finished pieces and comment on them! Our class will also be participating in an Arbor Day writing contest. We will begin working on these this week!. Math-We are still working on Unit 5, Landmarks and Large Numbers.  Content- We are sharing our Glogster projects on the Causes of the Revolution (link above), we learned about the Declaration of Independence, exactly what it means, how it was written, and how we celebrate the signing each year on July 4th.  Technology-Check out our Glogs on the Causes of the Revolution!! We are going to be trying something brand new to me called Aurasma to go with our wax museum projects. If you are interested in seeing a recording of your child's wax museum presentation and you have a smart phone, IPad, Ipod, etc., you can go ahead and download the app and I'll send more information when we start video recording! Should be fun!!

Lots of dates will be coming up in March for our wax museum, field trip, due dates for scrapbook, etc. I'll continue to add dates to our class calendar.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Scholastic Due January 15th


Dear Parents,
Hard copies of 4 scholastic  book orders are coming home today. Lots of good books about our nation's history, African American history, and our regular Lucky and Arrow catalogues. 
This month's Scholastic Book Club flyers are ready for you to explore with your child. Children read more when they choose their own books, so I encourage you to look at the flyers together.
You can order online or send the hardcopy orders back in with your child.. Online ordering saves time, offers more book choices, and earns extra rewards for the classroom and for parents. Directions and details below.
Happy reading,
_____________________________________
Mrs. C.
P.S. When you place your order online, you'll help earn FREE Books for our class and you also get a $5 FREE Book Pick Coupon to use on your next online order!

Ordering online is fast and easy:
REGISTER at https://orders.scholastic.com/GRZHL
CHOOSE from thousands of print titles, value packs, and Storia(TM) eBooks
SUBMIT the order to your child's teacher
EARN FREE Books for you and the classroom too!