Gift a Day 2013

December 2-6

Math - This week we continue Unit 4 "Numbers and Number Operations".   Building on experiences from previous grades, students deepen their understanding of place value and expand their ability to add, subtract, and multiply multi-digit numbers. Students make connections between base-ten representations and paper-and-pencil methods. They also further develop their mental math strategies. The goal of this unit is to improve students' skills and understanding of concepts so they can choose appropriate methods to solve problems efficiently and accurately.

Science and Social Studies – Students will wrap up civics and government.  Students will fill out a study guide and play games to study for the civics test.  The test will be Thursday, December 5.

Language Arts- The strategy review this week is monitor understand.  Word study for this week is suffixes.

Vocabulary this week – analyze – to study something; coastline – the boundary between land and water; current –parts of a body of water flow together in one direction; model– a small version of a larger object; swift- to move very quickly

Spelling words: about, do, each, will, countries, donkeys, invited, losing, masses, millions, nerves, received, wolves, worrying

Bonus: committed, instead, oxen, potatoes

November 25 - 29

Math - This week we continue Unit 4 "Numbers and Number Operations".   Building on experiences from previous grades, students deepen their understanding of place value and expand their ability to add, subtract, and multiply multi-digit numbers. Students make connections between base-ten representations and paper-and-pencil methods. They also further develop their mental math strategies. The goal of this unit is to improve students' skills and understanding of concepts so they can choose appropriate methods to solve problems efficiently and accurately.

Science and Social Studies – Students will continue studying civics and government.  Students will read about and complete activities to study the constitution.

Language Arts- The strategy review this week is monitor understand.  Word study for this week is helping verbs.

Vocabulary this week – No vocabulary this week

Spelling words: No spelling this week.

No School due to Thanksgiving Break November 27-29

Christmas Bureau Donations

Yearbook Sales

MTB Unit 4 Letter Home

Multiplication Fun

We have been learning about factors, multiples, prime and square numbers. Today the students ROCKED the math test.  Here are some links for continued practice at home. Continue to practice those multiplication facts so they are quick and accurate in computation.  Check out some games here

Prime Number Rap--remember the prime numbers.

Square Numbers Poem --remember the square numbers.

Factor Game --find all the factors of a number.

Factor Trees --factor a number to prime factorization.

Prime factorization --write a number using prime factorization form.

Array Game --use an array to represent a number.

Here are review vocabulary and lessons on these terms:

• Exponents
• Prime Numbers
• Square Numbers
• Factors

Guinness World Record Stack Up Event

Picture Retakes

West Picture retakes will be Tuesday, November 19 in the art room starting at 9:00.

Diaper Experiment

Our question for this experiment was "Which brand of diaper will hold the most water?"  So we made an hypothesis, set up and conducted the experiment.  Students followed the scientific method.

Pumpkin Math

Fourth grade used pumpkins to work on estimation skills for weight, circumference, and volume of their pumpkins.

Students started by making estimations of the circumference, weight, number of seeds and volume of their pumpkins.

Students worked together to make predictions before opening their pumpkins.

After estimating students weighed, measured the circumference, counted the seeds, and measured the volume of their pumpkins.

Marshmallow and Spaghetti Towers

The Challenge:  Make the tallest tower possible using marshmallows and spaghetti.
Students used the steps in the scientific method to conduct the experiment.  There are some impressive towers.

Scientific Method Saving Sam Lab

Students are learning the steps for the scientific method in science. We watched a rap video stating and explaining each of the steps. Students also created a foldable with the steps and an explanation of each step. They then glued it in their science journals.  Today we used those steps to conduct a short experiment, Saving Sam.  This was a fun and yummy experiment.

Pink Week

Cancer Stinks!  We wore PINK

Pink Week at West

Mrs. Schneider is our office assistant at West Elementary

Multiplication Practice

We have been talking about factors, multiples, and prime numbers.  Your student should be able to find factors of numbers up to 100 and skip count to find multiples of numbers 2-12.  Here are some fun practice sites.

Hooda Math

Floor Tiler Math Game

Students played a game that provided practice with the multiplication facts.  Each player would spin two numbers and use the product of the numbers to color in rectangles on grid paper.  Players took turns spinning and filling in rectangles until someone filled in the grid completely.

Great American Fund Raiser

West kicked off our Great American fundraiser on Tuesday, October 8th.  Sales will run through October 22.  Please have all money and order forms turned into the office no later than October 22 if you are participating.

This has been a highly successful fundraiser for our school in the past.  With these funds, we have purchased numerous items for students including, but not limited to, laptop computers, iPads, our large playground structure, picnic tables, soccer goals, Guided Reading books, and much more!  Our goal is to meet or exceed $10,000! 

The top five sellers will receive gift cards.  The class with the greatest participation and the class with the highest total in sales will win a classroom reward.

Please remember to collect payment at the time of sale.  Make sure you get their first and last name as well as address to deliver items.  You may also ask friends and family to order online at School Store

Our school code is 3139672. 

Pick-up night for all items will be Tuesday, November 21 from 5-6:30pm.  This will be curbside pick-up in the West parking lot, weather permitting.  In the event of inclement weather, pick-up will be in the building.

Thank you for supporting our fundraising efforts!

Thank you for supporting our school with this fundraiser.

Reading Comprehension

This nine weeks we have been talking about making connections, inferring, and creating images when reading.  These strategies help readers understand and comprehend text while reading.  Here are a few games to play for practice:

Into the Book

Reading Fun

Brain Pop

Doodle Splash

MTB Unit 3

Fourth grade students are learning about multiplication.  All students took a pre-test and were sorted into groups.  Each classroom teacher is teaching a group using differentiated instruction to meet the group’s needs.  The groups will go through the lessons in our math books and cover the KS State standards: Students will use place value & properties of multiplication to solve multi-digit problems.

·        represent & solve multiplication problems using rectangular arrays (area model).

·        identify prime & composite numbers (from 1-100).

·        identify square numbers (1-100).

·        use properties of multiplication to solve 4-digit by 1-digit & 2-digit by 2-digit problems.

·        use strategies for multiplication to solve 4-digit by 1-digit & 2-digit by 2-digit problems.

·        use a number line to represent multiples of a number (1-100).

·        find all factor pairs for a number (1-100).

·        decide if one number (1-100) is a multiple of another number (0-9).

·        apply the order of operations to solve problems.

For further information check out the unit letter at Letter Home

Antopolis Runways

Students applied the TIMS Laboratory Method to analyze the relationship between side length and perimeter for rectangles. They generalized these ideas and communicated how to find perimeters of rectangles using pictures, symbols, or words. They did this by designing an airport for Antopolis.

Grandparent's Day 2013

Butterfly Life Cycle

Students learned about the life cycle of butterflies as part of our plant and animal unit.  They demonstrated what they learned by creating a butterfly life cycle on a paper plate.

Flower Dissection

We had fun dissecting flowers and learning about their internal and external structures.  A big thank you goes out to Anitta Staats for donating the flowers.

iPad Fun

Students used the iPad app, Comic Touch to take a picture of themselves and write something they like about school or fourth grade.  As you can see, they had fun distorting their pictures.  Can you tell which picture is your child?

Planting Pea Seeds

Multiplication Doubles

Creating Human Graphs and Data

Germinating Seeds

Carnival Help Needed

Dear Parents,

Our West Fall Carnival is approaching quickly!  The event will be held on Friday, September 20 from 5:00-7:30pm.  We need your help to have a successful event for our school!  If you have not yet signed up to work at our class booth, please access the link below and add your name to one of the open time slots.  If you can work more than one time slot, that is great too! 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aofb4NyUbyaldExhX3Q1cHlpaXY2TXN1OTJ5anlZN2c&usp=sharin

The West Fall Carnival is a tradition for our community.  The proceeds are used to support special activities and materials for our students.  Thank you for helping us make this year’s Fall Carnival the best one yet!

First Day 2013

Eyeglasses Collection

Joe Wilken, local Lions Club member, gave a presentation to all classes this week on the International Lions Club project, which focuses on literacy. One of the projects of the Lions Club is to collect used eyeglasses to be recycled and sent to third world countries for those in need. They also collect used hearing aids to provide to those less fortunate. We are asking students and staff to donate any old eyeglasses and/or hearing aids to the program. Students may bring their donations to the West library from now until January 31.

Thank you for supporting this very worthy cause!