Music Concert

The Storm Lake Elementary 4th graders put on a music concert on Tuesday, April 19th.  The concert was titled "A Better You, A Better Me" which highlighted the schools new commitment to the Character Counts program.

Freedom Quilt

This was a fun activity to do because we learned what the signals mean my signal means to pack what is necessary to survive

It was a fun activity because we now know the signals.

It was so fun to learn about how they used there quilts on escaping and what the quilts meant to other slaves and they were very colorful and realistic.

This was fun to make it was fun and part of our history and a signal for the slaves.

Slavery was a big part of our history. The quilts helped lots of slaves escape. 

There are many different kinds of quilt squares that helped a lot to the slaves.

We put a lot of effort to this project and these quilts helped many slave escape to freedom.

We had to choose different signs the ones shown here are the bears claw, the tumbling blocks, the carpenters wheel and the log cabin.

Making this quilt was a lot of fun because you got to choose if you  wanted cloth on it or if you wanted to color it.

IT WAS ELECTRIC!!

A member of the Science Center of Iowa came to speak to our students last Friday about the power of electricity.

our favorite part  was when he made lighting and when he made that girl hair stand up.

It was so cool with all of the experiment 

 think you for coming.It was funny when he made the pickle terned hot and when it smoked.I found it very intresting  to see a pickle that  turned on fire  

Conservation Poster Winners

Family History

The family history projects originated last year in fourth grade as a way for students to dig deeper in to the concept of immigration as well as to enhance their research skills.  As teachers we were learning about how to have students use interviews as a means of researching ideas and so we started to build an activity that would allow students to integrate skills and knowledge into our Social Studies units.  


Enjoy their projects and commentary!

This is my Family history Project and it tells about where my ancestors came from and their traditions.  I hope you like it.

This a picture of me it was fun doing this project.I learned a lot of my family.

This project was a lot of fun because you get to know were they came from and you can see what other people did.

It was exiting for me to make the family tree.

This is me with my family history with a Mexican flag. My family likes to make a lot of my grandma's food.

My family came from Germany and i like to know I am from Germany!

Educational websites

One of the websites our class visits a lot is the Scholastic website at www.scholastic.com.  It features many informational and educational activities.  Our class is always excited to engage in the activities.  A featured area of the scholastic website is the virtual tours that students can take when they search the content we are studying at the time.

Here is the most recent virtual tour we took on the topic of slavery.
http://teacher.scholastic.com/activities/bhistory/underground_railroad/

Math-CGI

In the past few years our teachers have been fortunate to be trained in the philosophy of teaching math for understanding.  The program we've studied is know as CGI (Cognitively Guided Instruction).  Here is a link that may help provide a better understanding of what the purpose of CGI in the classroom is and how it will benefit our students.
http://www.sedl.org/pubs/sedl-letter/v15n01/5.html

"We did it in one recess!!"

These students were excited to finally finish a complete jigsaw puzzle in one 15 minute recess.  They had been working on different puzzles during inside recess for most of the month of January.  Their hard work and team work finally paid off!

How the Brain Works

I was channel surfing last night and stumbled upon a great episode of Scientific American Frontier about how our brain works.

Watch it at
http://video.iptv.org/video/1390247671

SNOWSHOES!!!

Our class wanted to share their fun time in the snow while using snow shoes today.  Also, they wanted to thank our Buena Vista County naturalist, Katie van der Linden for providing the snow shoes and instructions on how to use them.