Sci/Tech has been rockin’ and rollin’ this week. It is the hope that the student’s articles will give you a flavor of the previous weeks activities. There are a few things I wanted to put into writing. This newsletter will hopefully supplement the website and not replace it. I wanted to thank everyone that was able to send in 2-liter bottles and Walk-a-thon money. We are still in need of volunteers to help during stations please sign up. Thank you to those that have already signed up.

One of the big themes we have been talking about this week is troubleshooting. In Tech we discussed the fact that, as magical as it would be to have more, there is only one Mr. Cornwall! Because of this fact I cannot help everyone solve every minor problem. So we made a poster on ways to “troubleshoot” and try to solve problems. Hopefully this can transfer to elements of home life and your child can find ways to better “troubleshoot” their problems and be more self reliant. I do not want them to be completely self suficiant, they are

September 27th | 2013

still kids, but I think they can learn to problem solve before asking for help. Let me know if you find they are trying these skills at home.

It has come to our attention that our small snack we are able to enjoy in the afternoon has become, in the words of a hobbit, a sort of “second” lunch. We do not want your child to be hungry, but the large snacks they are bringing are interfearing with our learning. Please help your son/daughter choose a small snack that they can eat in five minutes or less. Thank you so much for your help in this matter.

I am in need of a few things. As stated at curriculim night I am interested in building comupters this year as part of our wednesday rotations. I am wondering if there are parents or individuals that might be able to point me in a direction to get some cheap computer parts. I am hoping to do this later in the year. If you have any ideas please contact me.

Finally, I have decided to produce a newsletter every two weeks rather then every week. The website is

Volume 1 | Issue 1

Teacher’s Note

BE SAFE : BE KIND : BE PRODUCTIVE“Creativity is seeing what everyone else has seen, and thinking what no one else has thought.”

~ Einstein

COMING SOON!

SCI/TECH MAGNETNEWSLE T T ER

updated daily with homework and important dates. We want the newsletter to contain the “what are the kids doing” information. Hopefully this will increase the quality of the newsletter.

Sincerly,

Reading: Non Fiction Text Features

Writing: Developing Personal Narratives

Math: 4th Addition/Subtraction & 5th Unit 2 Estimation and Computation

Social Studies: Washington State Geography

Science: Setting up terrariums and planting seeds

Technology: What makes a good game?

READINGBy:Lexi and Alice

This month we are learning about text features. We are also trying to find text features in our own nonfiction books. Some examples of text features are: captions, photos, graphs, and maps. We are also reading a nonfiction book called Digging up Tyranasourous Rex. In the book they have found the first bone of a Tyranasourous Rex. A girl named Kathy Wankel discovered the bones on a walk with her family. She hurried to the museum and showed the scientist the piece of the bone she found. The scientists were happy and went quickly to investigate. They put plaster on it to protect it. We are all looking forward to learn more about this book.

Our terrariums

STUDENT ARTICLES

Students working on our science unit.

P.E.by Jade and Zach

This week in P.E. we have been doing fitness testing like the P.A.C.E.R., the sit and reach, push up test and the curl ups. On Thursday we had the walk-a-thon. We did the walk-a-thon for 30 minutes. The record for the most laps was 20 done by a 5th grader. Good job! Also in P.E. we have been doing team building excises. Some of the team building excises is the parashoot game, where you use a parashoot and a ball to launch the ball into the basketball hoop. Also in P.E. we made a poster for each, be Safe, be Kind and be Productive. In P.E. class we have personal spots, where we sit in every time we come into P.E. class.

Our teachers name is Mrs. Jackson. She is very kind, fit and healthy. That’s it for this week, fellow readers. Take care.

TECHNOLOGYby Sumedh and Ajay

In the previous weeks, we learned many programs ixl, scratch, face your manga, and khan academy. This week we learned how to trou-bleshoot problems on the com-puter and netbooks. Netbooks are like tiny laptops. We learned a game chronotron that was our homework for one day. The fun thing is when ever we finish math we get to go onto ixl.com because it helps us in math. For water ecol-ogy, we use a website that lets us talk with a person in New Mexico. We also use ipads in science. We

C L A R K E L E M E N T A R Y S C I E N C E / T E C H N O L O G Y N E W S L E T T E R

These are the dice we use to practice our math facts!

MATHby Steven and Thomas

Each day we start math with multiplication practice. We have these cool dice to generate our problems. Mainly we have been working on place value, and making sense of numbers, for example: In the number 2,358 the 3’s value is 300. There is a difference between a numbers value and the place value. We also took numbers apart and put them back together, for example, 425 is the same as (400+20+5). This is called expanded form.

C L A R K E L E M E N T A R Y S C I E N C E / T E C H N O L O G Y N E W S L E T T E R

also use computers for other rea-sons like typing newspapers for in-formation the student’s type and not the actual newspaper editors. We also once used it for what our vocabulary words meant. On the computers we made are avatars for our video games. We did some-times on an assignment we got to play on scratch. We have used our technology for many weeks. Once we even got to play chronotron that was very fun! That technolo-gy has happened in the previous weeks.

LIBRARYby Ryan and Brady

At library, we are learning about different authors and their books. Out of our thirty minutes, twenty are spent teaching. You only have eight minutes to check out your books. Our teacher is named Mrs. Fagundes. She is nice, but she

won’t let you keep overdue books. If you get in line outside the time limit, or have an overdue book, you have to put your books on the hold shelf. The book sections are: no-fic-tion, early reader, everybody, maga-zines, reference, and nonfiction. The reading challenge is going on. It doesn’t have a sign-up. You can use the computers to catalog. I don’t know what fifth grade is doing.

SOCIAL STUDIESby Devian and Solomon

Welcome to the yearlong studies of Washington state here at Clark Shark’s Magnet program. We have made strips that describes Washing-ton climate to put on our Washing-ton bulletin board. We’ve also been studying out of our social studies textbooks about Washington State and learned that climate effects culture, which means that for exam-ple where you live effects how you live. Since Washington falls in to the Pacific Northwest, it is really rainy compared to other states. In some-where else, such as Arizona, people live differently because it is always sunny. So if you live in Washington, always carry your umbrella!!! Finally, we talked about geographic co-or-dinates of Washington which is 45 north &120 west. There is lot more to come so, Stay tuned for our next social studies 4th grade class news-paper!

STUDENT ARTICLES CONTINUED

Comic by Cole

C L A R K E L E M E N T A R Y S C I E N C E / T E C H N O L O G Y N E W S L E T T E R

WRITINGby Daniel and Gil

Hi I’m Daniel with my partner Gil and We have very exciting news for you. On Monday we wrote non-fiction writing. Mr. Cornwall’s writing was a explaining of a little boy named Ethan McDowell. It was about a little boy in 1st grade and he decided to stay after recess and see what happened. (Mr. Cornwall got that idea because in first grade he hid on the play ground after re-cess). On Tuesday we wrote about our characters. Some of their per-sonality for some of the characters (like mine) had a nice personality and good at baseball, and does not like football. Some other per-sonalities are nice or mean.

SCIENCEby No Name

This week in science we have been learning about ecology….Everybody in science and technology has made videos about us to show to students in Mexico. Throughout the year we will discuss water ecology with them. Meanwhile, we have started to make terrariums. We will keep bugs and grow plants in our terrariums.

Each terrarium is made out of used bottles, to keep the earth

green (that’s why we asked you to bring in 2 liter bottles). Later on we will set up fish tanks too, but we have not done that yet. Every day we sink more and more into to science!

We are happy to say that anybody who wants to volunteer is welcome to. Science tech is in need of volunteers for science. When the years go by we’ll all be off to summer, so be glad it’s only the beginning.

MUSIC by:Sarah and Morgan

This year in Mrs. Watkins’s music class we, the fourth graders, get to play the recorders and the fifth graders get to play the guitars. Since we are fourth graders we don’t know exactly what the fifth graders are doing so we don’t have a lot of information on what they are doing in music. Mrs. Watkins said that recorders are the biggest concert of the school year, and we bet that all the fourth graders are excited.

Shaun Cornwallcornwalls@issaquah.wednet.edu

Toni Williswillist@issaquah.wednet.edu

Important Contact Information

October

14 – 18: BOOK FAIR - It will be open during lunch from 11 – 12:30 for PARENTS ONLY on Tuesday and Wednesday with Family Night on Thursday.

23-25: Camp Colman (5th only)

Major Up Coming Events: Dates and times are subject to change Please check our website for latest information

November

1: Literature circles begin

15: Field Trip to the Washington State History Museumeuipit iuscinim doloborem dit

http://connect.issaquah.wednet.edu/elementary/clark/staff/ms_guillens_site/default.aspx

Comic by Collin

Looking for some nonfiction text features?