Celebrate the arts!

It is a great time to be a fourth grader in the Lower Division! Our trip last week to the Ringling Museum was tremendous. Students enjoyed a tour of the galleries at Ringling, seeing many Baroque and Renaissance paintings and sculptures. Our docent talked about the symbolism in the religious paintings, engaging students to share their interpretations and describe what they were seeing. The grounds of the museum are beautiful, and the architecture of the main museum is grand. Students were enthralled. We were also able to spend some time in the circus exhibit; it holds a train car fully staged with the props of circus travel. Also in the exhibit are other items, such as a trapese, an elephant headdress, and a unicycle on a high wire! As always, however, students were most captivated by the miniature circus replica in the Tibbals Museum. This scale replica depicts circus life, from the mess tent, the animal tents, living quarters and, of course, the three ring circus under the big top. The model is not only animated, but it is fully equipped with lights, so when the room lights are dimmed, the lights in the model turn on, and viewers see the circus as it would have looked at night. The model truly is a thing of beauty, so much so that it (almost) makes one forget about harsher circus realities. It was a tremendous day.

This week will be a busy one with a number of activities to celebrate the visual and performing arts. Storytellers, bluegrass singer, photographers, opera singers--students will be exposed to all! And as dictated by tradition, the week culminates with a musical performance and picnic lunch on Friday at 11:00. Each grade level will perform a song, and then we will eat together outside on the grass. Please be sure to send a sack lunch with your child that day, unless you opted her her/him to receive a sack lunch from Sage. Stay tuned for pictures next week of all of the festivities.

In math, we have begun working on a short unit on geometry. Students will be learning about pre-images and images, lines of reflection and symmetry, and congruent figures. Figures that are congruent can, of course, be flipped, rotated and slip on a plane; students will take this understanding and create frieze patterns. This is a fun unit with an emphasis on strengthening spacial understanding. Students can expect to take the assessment on Friday, April 27.

In social students, project work is well underway. Students have spent a number of class sessions conducting research in topics of choice from both books as well as online sources. As expected, many students have refined or broadened their topics after doing some investigations. Most students chose to work with a partner, although a few are working independently. Topics include the following:

• women's roles in Colonial America
• slavery
• Ben Franklin
• farming
• children's games
• clothing
• the Battle of Bunker Hill
• weapons of battle
• Salem Witch Trials
• the Boston Tea party
• pets in Colonial America
• George Washington

On Wednesday of this week, we will begin a round in technology, so students will continue to conduct research as well as confer with Mrs. Baralt about what type of technology they will use to create their presentations. Once a format has been determined, students will make a plan and, after research is complete, begin creating the presentation component of their projects. Once the project work is complete, we will invite you to a sharing. That should happen in early May.

With our Author Celebration approaching in two weeks, students are eager to begin working again on their fictional narratives, after some hiatus. We have focused intently on crafting engaging leads, as well as developing characters who change through the course of a story. Because characters are expected to change in a way that is familiar to the writers--their problems must resonate. This helps writers create stronger stories, writing about what they know. Students will select their favorite works to share on April 27th for our Celebration.

In reading, we began reading The Magician's Elephant by Kate DiCamillo. It has been a Kate DiCamillo year! We are currently working together to model and practice how readers identify broad themes in novels. These themes frame our thinking as we read--and writing about what we read--and help support conversations with our book club partners. The themes we have identified thus far include truth, love and magic--the magic of magicians as well as the magic that seems to happen in life. All the work we do while reading this book together will help support the work students are doing in their book clubs.

In science, students will be wrapping up a unit on land and water. As a culminating activity, students will be charged with taking all that they have learned to design cities that can survive exceptionally heavy rains. We will then transition into a unit focused on animal classification.

Have a fantastic week!

Upcoming important events:
April 16 - 20: Celebrate the Arts
April 20: Celebrate the Arts performance and lunch, 11:00 a.m.
April 27: Author Celebration, 8:30 a.m.
April 30 - May 4: ERB testing
May 11: 4th grade Middle Division visit
May 21: Lowry Park Zoo trip
May 25: Moving Up Ceremony, 8:45 a.m.
May 28: no school
May 30: last day of school (half day)