4th grade musical

The 4th graders did a great job with their musical performance this afternoon and evening!
Here is a link to the video of the afternoon performance.

4th grade musical afternoon performance

Our Geosphere

Our scientific knowledge of our geosphere has been growing by leaps and bounds!  The kids have been using research and scientific experiments or investigations to understand how our earth's surface changes.  We began with exploring tectonic plate movement and the affects that has on the earth's surface.  We discovered ways in which tectonic plates move and learned that earthquakes, volcanos, and mountains are all caused by  tectonic plate movement.  We noticed that the earth's surface either breaks down, or is built up by these movements, and shared our knowledge about 1 specific expert area.  

We've recently been performing experiments to see how water, wind, and ice break down rock into sediment and then erode it and deposit in new locations.  We're learning about the process of abrasion, weathering, erosion and deposition. We've been trying to use those vocabulary words in a variety of ways in our writing. We've written scientific observations, poems and even letters from one rock to another.  We even demonstrated the process using other objects like erasers, paper, or our snack! Again we're noticing that abrasion, weathering, and erosion break down the earth's surface and erosion and deposition work to build it up. 

We've been focusing on our nonfiction reading  and research skills while we're learning all of this scientific information.  We notice how authors are using text features and even similes to help us understand these new concepts.  We've also been working on our note-taking skills by identifying the main idea and finding supporting details that we can record in our own words.  We're also working on reading nonfiction in small bites and thinking deeply about the text  we're reading by making connections to things we already know, reflecting about what the text is telling us, and asking questions as we read.