Check it out!

Here is a collection of pictures from things that have been going on in our classroom.  Look for our kiddos reading with their 1st grade book buddies, learning how to find factor pairs, dissecting a cow eye, practicing our keyboarding skills, and learning how the eye works with an eye model!

Socktober!

Harlan Elementary joined forces with the high school this year to put on our 2nd annual sock drive known as Socktober!  At Harlan, we had a goal to collect 1,000 socks.  Each grade level worked very hard and we SURPASSED our goal!!!  The high school almost doubled the goal, meaning we collected close 3,000 pairs of socks.  The Fellowship Cup, along with many other organizations in our area, was extremely grateful for our donations. 

Guest Teachers

Recently, we have had some guest teachers come in to our classroom to teach us some valuable lessons.  Students from Iowa Wesleyan University came last week to teach us about number and shape patterns.  The students really enjoyed all the fun activities they planned for us!  Today, a creative writing class came to teach us how to be more descriptive when we write.  We hope that they come back again soon.

At least two times a month, Cari from the Oakland Mills Nature Center comes for an hour long activity.  Her last two visits included Native American games and how to use a compass. 

Reading, Math, Science OH MY!

Reading: Over the past 2 weeks, we have been reading and learning about Technical Texts.  Technical Texts contain steps and/or procedures to complete a certain task and the importance of each procedure.  Two of our favorite technical texts that we read were about density and our pulse rate.  Below, you will see students conducting an experiment on density and calculating their resting pulse rate.

Math: We just finished up a unit on Place Value.  We took the unit assessment earlier in the week.  I will share the assessment with you at conferences, but if you're interested in your child's score prior to that, I am more than willing to share it with you!  We just began a unit on multiplication and division.  In third grade, there is a large focus on strategies to learn multiplication facts.  In fourth grade, we take multiplication a bit further and apply it to word problems and multi digit numbers X one dight or two digit numbers.  We are reviewing our facts, but it is extremely important that they are practicing them at home!  Yesterday we reviewed multiplication as groups of objects and how to write an equation.  Some of us really enjoyed using manipulatives, like you will see in the photos!

Science: Science was all about the human body, specifically muscles, joints, bones, and tendons.  Part of our learning included a chicken wing dissection!  We had a lot of fun learning more about our body by dissecting the chicken wing.  Take a look below!  Now that our science unit is over, we are headed to Mrs. Erwin's room for social studies!

Homecoming Week!