Field+Based+Activities+October

Our month started off with fair day and staff development. At our staff development meeting, I presented the correlations to math and reading found in our SuccessMaker program. Many of the teachers know about these, but it is good to refresh them every year as most do not utilize the program to its fullest potential. In my classroom, we have been studying the properties of multiplication. I thought it would be good for the students to see how other fourth graders in the district learn about these properties, so we had a video conference with a friend of mine who teaches at another school. The kids at both schools loved the experience and had developed some good questions to ask each other as a "test" at the end. We followed this activity up by having the students create a PowerPoint with examples of the different properties. The students first task was to storyboard what they wanted to present so they would not spend time trying to remember what they had to do. This activity was a huge success in the room and the students are eager for their next project. The month wrapped up with training on the Qwizdom student response system. We have this system at our school, but the only teacher that ever used them has left and now they just sit. They will be coming out soon. See the files for this month's report.