Wow! Over the last month my 4th graders have participated in many exciting technology projects.

 International Dot Day

My 4th grade class and a 1st grade class celebrat- ed “International Dot Day” together on Friday, September 16. This is a global celebration of creativity, courage, and collaboration centered around Peter H. Reynolds’ book The Dot. Students read the book then created beauti- ful artwork while they listened to The Dot Song. 

Oreo Project

The oreo project is an oreo stacking contest created by Jen Wagner.  My students were challenged by three other classrooms around the world through a Google Hangout to see how many oreos they could stack before the tower fell. I began the project with the anchor chart to the left and had students estimate about how many oreos they thought they could stack.

Then we began the challenge with the other classes via Google Hangout. 

Here's what a few students had to say about the project. 

The Math teacher even took the project a step further by using student's collected data to determine the average number of cookies that were stacked by classes. 

Poetry Project

The poetry Project is another project created by Jen Wagner in which students each month learn about a different form of poetry or poet. We participated in a Google Hangout with two other classrooms and shared poetry. We read a poem about Hurricanes which is the topic of our current unit of study in Reading. Then we played a Kahoot game on poetry with the other two classes.

Techie Club

Today I hosted my first techie club which will last for approximately 8 months. My club's theme is Game Design using the platform Google CS First. Students will learn how to code and create their own game. 

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Mrs. Shepherd

      Students in 4th grade are expected to draw evidence from literary or informational texts to support their analysis, reflection and research. This is where the Assess Your Response strategy comes in. This is a strategy I practice with students weekly.

The anchor chart to the left shows the three steps to this strategy. I call it the SSP strategy. Whenever students see a constructed response on their test or during a weekly assignment they are to put SSP in the margin of the response. The first step is to STEAL words from the question to restate and answer very simply. Students are not allowed to use "because" in the very first sentence. This comes later. Then a SENTENCE to explain the "Power Word". Last to PROVE their answer with evidence from the text. Once student write their response they Assess their response by using colored pencils to check for the three components of the response.

Red = STEAL
Blue= SENTENCE TO EXPLAIN
Orange= PROVE WITH EVIDENCE


Below you can see the daily Writing goal on the Smartboard and my modeled and guided response.

Here's a sample of students completing one in their notebook.

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Mrs. Shepherd