What’s Going On In our Classroom? Weekly Update from Ms. Goldy 4/11-4/15

(Above: Pysanka egg dying!)






(Above: Poetry cafe!)

(Above: Social Studies Presentations and the park ranger tells us how to recognize frog calls)


Hello Parents!

This has been a fun week in the CotiSweets classroom! First of all, pat your students on the back, for they did a wonderful job with the DC-CAS! It takes a lot of stamina to take any standardized test, but they made it through two weeks of it! Ms. Coti and I recognize and are so proud of all of their hard work and we’re sure that they did us proud.

This week in Social Studies we wrapped up the Famous Colonial Figures presentations, and everyone did a wonderful job! We’re almost finished with this unit, and then we will begin learning about the Revolutionary War.

Thank you so much for celebrating the end of our poetry unit with us! The publishing party was great and we were so happy to see so many families join us.

This week we had a park ranger from our first environmental field trips come and teach us how to recognize different frog calls! The entire fourth grade joined our class in listening to recorded calls and learning how to be great listeners so that we can help this NASA-sponsored program count how many frogs (and what types) live in specific areas of DC.

As I’m sure many of you have heard about, Ms. Coti introduced us to Pysanka egg decorating this week—a Ukranian tradition that is similar to Batiking. The kids LOVED it, and got very creative when making their eggs! Some students also worked on the butterfly mosaic table top that is our class auction project, and it is looking great!


As I just (sadly) announced to your students, my last week student teaching is the week after Spring Break ☹ So unfortunately next week’s blog update will be my last!
Have a wonderful Spring Break and enjoy the pictures—I have A LOT this week!
Ms. Goldy

What’s Going On In our Classroom? Weekly Update from Ms. Goldy 4/4-4/8

(Top: Social Studies presentations and working on our butterfly projects!)
(Bottom: more butterfly oragami, our pizza party, and working on making our poetry books!!)







Hello families!

We survived the first week of the DC-CAS! Pat your child on the back, they all did a fantastic job and Ms. Coti and I are VERY proud of them!! As promised, because there were no pictures last week, this week there are plenty!!

As you may have heard, we have a fairly new system in our classroom in which we help students realize that we are a team and need to be responsible for our actions as a whole group. In order to keep track of how we’re doing, we have a Marvelous Marble jar to which we add marbles each time our class is doing a great job (and from which a scoop can be taken out if we are not doing our personal best as a whole)—and this week we reached the top!! Because of this, our class voted on the prize: a pizza party! What a great way to end a long testing week.

In Social Studies we are presenting our famous Colonial figure projects. Everyone has such a great job and we are learning a lot of interesting facts! Enjoy the pictures!

Our theme for the school-wide auction is B for Butterflies. This week Linn Meyers (Sheppy’s mom) and Sheri Carline (James’ mothers) came to our class to work on the table top that we are mosaic tiling and helped us make origami butterflies. Thanks so much!! Our basket and project are going to be great!

We are wrapping up our poetry unit in writing workshop and as a culmination to the unit, we are compiling our poems into individual books! We will be having a publishing party on Wednesday, April 13^th, at 1:20pm—please join us!! On this day we will be showcasing our books and sharing some of our favorite poems—hope to see you there! Please contact me with any questions.

Another announcement: on Tuesday afternoon we will be doing a Pysanka egg dying project. Today a flier was sent home with your student. Please send your child to school with 1-2 eggs on Tuesday, preferably “blown” out. Please contact Ms. Coti with any questions.

That’s it for now—please continue to help your student get a lot of rest and have a good breakfast because testing resumes on MONDAY (today DCPS called and changed testing to Monday and Tuesday rather than Tuesday and Wednesday).

Have a great weekend!

Ms. Goldy

What's Going On In Our Classroom? Weekly Update From Ms. Goldy Week of 3/28-4/1

Hello again!
This has been a busy week in the Coti Sweets classroom!
In Social Studies, each student is researching one famous figure from the Colonial era. Next week they will present their findings to the class! They were given a packet with all of the guidelines, a rubric, helpful resources, and due dates, so if you have any questions take a look at that or contact me. From what I've seen and heard they have already found interesting information and are coming up with very creative projects!

In Writing Workshop we are continuing our poetry unit, this week focusing on sensory details--details about the five senses. On Tuesday, we visited our garden and wrote down observations based on our five senses (what we heard, what we saw, what we smelled, etc.). On Wednesday, we tried our hand at writing poetry with sensory details as well as other poetic devices such as similes, metaphors, and rhyming.

Despite the cold spell, this week we planted some seeds indoors to go into our garden!

Next week is the DC-CAS and in preparation we have been reviewing strategies for test taking and reviewing some math, reading, and writing skills. Please remind your child to do their best, remember their strategies, and don't stress! They can do it if they just focus! Also, please make sure that your child is at school on time (there are very strict procedures we have to follow in relation to the CAS), gets a good breakfast, and has had enough sleep the night before.

That's it for now--sorry for no pictures this week, I'll make sure that there are extra pictures next week!!
Ms. Goldy

What’s Going On In our Classroom? Weekly Update from Ms. Goldy 3/21-3/25

(Top: Guest speaker in math, and students explore geometry and angles with mirrors)


(Above) Exploring geometry/angles with mirrors, some student "dictionaries" for geometric transformation terms, and students conduct the "cube drop" as they explore probability.

Hi again!
This week was the first of a two-week “takeover” in which I take a try at being the full-time lead teacher in the classroom, and boy, did we learn a lot this week!

In preparation for the (dreaded) DC-CAS, this week we have been doing some extra math practice in our homeroom. On Monday we explored the geometric transformations called “slide” (translation), “flip” (reflection), and “turn” (rotation). In pairs, we mimicked the transformations using our bodies and then traced pattern blocks to make “dictionaries” of these terms. Later in the week we also explored similar vs. congruent shapes and practiced various math skills using “probes” created by Mrs. Cahir.

In Social Studies we are still learning about the 13 Colonies. This week we finished up our enlarged maps, learned about the Puritans and the Quakers, reenacted the Triangular Trade Route, and wrote diary entries from the point of view of a slave on the Middle Passage.

In Writing Workshop we are still working on our poetry unit—this week focusing on rhythm and rhyme. It’s a tricky concept, but we were able to identify the rhythm and rhyme schemes in limericks and then write our own!

In Coti Math, we are finishing a unit on fractions, and we most recently applied our knowledge to probability, conducting a “cube-drop” experiment in which pairs of students dropped a small cube 50 times onto a piece of graph paper that was colored with a particular ratio of colors. Students then recorded their results and compared them to their predictions (the probability based on the color ratio) from the day before.

On Friday, Coti Math had a guest speaker who taught us how to measure angles and about geometry using mirrors! Check out some of the pictures--the students loved it!

That’s all for now!
Ms. Goldy

What’s Going On In our Classroom? Weekly Update from Ms. Goldy 3/14-3/17

(Left: creating our own fraction games)


(Students explore circuits!)





Hello again from the Coti Sweets classroom! Although this week was only four days, it was packed with fun activities and we sure learned a lot!

First of all, we want to thank those of you who showed up to and/or helped out with the Politics and Prose fundraiser last weekend—we had a great turnout! More specifically, Ms. Coti and I really appreciate those of you who donated books to our classroom. We really appreciate it!

In Social Studies we continued learning about the 13 colonies—researching and presenting on one specific colony. Each pair did a great job with the research, presentation, and file folder that they used to present their material. Take a look in our classroom—they are hanging on a bulletin board along with our colony postcards from last week!

In Science with Ms. Coti, we learned about electric circuits this week, exploring how to make one using only 2 wires, a D-cell battery, and a small light bulb. Everyone had a lot of fun experimenting with these materials, and it was so exciting when the light bulbs turned on!

Last week into this week, Coti Math has been applying their knowledge about fractions to games! Using any materials they could find, students were instructed to create a game that used fractions. This week students finalized their games and we all played them—the students were very creative!

On a different note, we are excited to announce that all of our 4^th grade classes got approved to go on a series of four environmental science field trips this Spring!! More information and permissions slips will be coming soon!!

That’s all for now—we have a lot of pictures this week, so enjoy them and have a great long weekend!

Ms. Goldy

What's Going On In Our Classroom? Weekly Update from Ms. Goldy: Week of 3/7-3/11

Hello!
This week has been great!
In Social Studies, we wrote postcards from the perspective of colonists from either Spanish colonies, Jamestown, or Plymouth. The kids showed their knowledge well and drew some creative pictures on the front of their postcards! We are now beginning our unit on the 13 Colonies, and so far we've been learning a lot of interesting things!

In Writing Workshop we are still working on our poetry unit. This week, we learned about similes and metaphors and came up with creative examples to describe our friends in the classroom! We also learned about personification and drew great (and often hilarious!) pictures of what a sentence using personification would look like if it was taken literally. Like our previous poems, each of these will eventually be compiled into individual book that the students will make and bring home in a few weeks.

On Tuesday, our class visited Beauvoir Elementary School to pair up with second graders and plant spinach and lettuce seeds. In the Spring we will return and make a salad with our own vegetables! The kids had a great time and the 2nd graders did too!!

That's all for now,
Have a great weekend!
Ms. Goldy

What’s Going On In our Classroom? Weekly Update from Ms. Goldy 3/1-3/4

Hello! It was so great to meet so many of you parents at parent-teacher conferences on Monday and I’m so happy to hear that so many of you look at this blog ☺

This has been quite a week! Despite the long weekend, your kids were hard at work from the day they returned to school. All of Tuesday and Wednesday mornings were taken up by our final DC-BAS test before the CAS in April. Although such testing is never fun, the kids worked through it and did very well.

In honor of Dr. Seuss’s birthday, on Wednesday we began our poetry unit in writing workshop. So far we have learned about (and written our own!) acrostics, poems using alliteration, learned about palindromes, and we are in the process of working on poems using onomatopoeias! At the end of the unit, each student is going to “publish” their own book of poetry, which will highlight what we have learned throughout the unit. After celebrating our books in the classroom they will be sent home for you to enjoy with your child!

In Social Studies we learned about the Mayflower Compact and how its purpose was essentially to solve a problem for the Pilgrims (there was no government in their new colony). We then applied these problem-solving skills to a problem in our own classroom: talking while others are talking. After getting into groups to brainstorm solutions to this problem, each group presented their ideas to the class. We then voted on a solution and signed our own CotiSweets Compact! If you’re in our classroom, take a look at it—it’s hanging on the wall with all of our signatures at the bottom.

That’s it for now,
Have a great weekend,
Ms. Goldy