STEM Apps

Congratulations to our group of Sami, Makenna and Claire.  Their app was chosen to be published.  They chose to name their app "Rocking Genres".  All of the apps are amazing and I was so proud of our fourth graders!

Field Trip to AirZoo

The fourth grade had a great trip to the AirZoo last week. Besides the amazing planes on exhibit, we were able to have a guided tour of the space center which tied in with our space unit. We also participated in a class on electricity where students played with and made an electromagnet. Great fun was had by all! 

8th Annual Reading Rocks Festival

On Saturday, June 4, The Rockford Rotary, Kent District Library, and the Rockford community will host the 8th Annual Reading Rocks in Rockford Festival from 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM. The purpose of the festival is to promote and celebrate reading within our schools and community. All activities will take place on the grounds of the Krause Memorial Library and the City Hall parking lot. Michigan authors will be in attendance with books to sell. Entertainment is back this year, and Mark Newman is back to reconnect with Rockford students. Dress up as a favorite storybook character and walk in the kickoff parade at 9:45 in front of the library. Don’t miss it!

Valentine's Party

Valentine's Day

Many thanks to Mrs. Belcher and Mrs. Motta for a fabulous party again this year. Please thank them when you see them for putting together three great parties this school year for our kids. Here are some pictures of our day. My favorite was the chopstick candy. Tougher than it looks!  

Science Update

The fourth graders have just started our View from the Earth science unit.  In this unit, the students will learn how the Earth gets day and night due to the rotation of the Earth.  After learning about the cause of day and night, we will move on to the orbit of the moon around Earth as it is rotating on its axis as well.  While the Earth makes one complete rotation on its axis in 24 hours, it takes the moon about as long to make one complete rotation as it does to orbit Earth.  The moon's orbit takes 29 1/2 days.  Students will learn about the movement of Earth and the moon through a lot of movement to help them understand what is happening in our immense universe.  

 

Social Studies Update

Next week we will begin our study of the branches of the federal government, investigating the duties of each branch’s leaders, as well as understanding separation of powers and checks and balances. We will compare the federal government system with state and local systems.

Math

Hi Parents,
Our new math program is going really well.  I am impressed with the knowledge students gained in fractions in the last unit.  Students were able to use many manipulatives and dig deeper into understanding of fractions and their relationship with decimals.  Unit 4, our current math unit, is mostly on multiplication.  This unit gives multiple ways to solve multiplication problems including partial products and lattice multiplication.  The way the unit is designed, the traditional form of multiplication that most of us learned in school, isn't introduced until fifth grade.  That being said, most of the students were introduced to traditional multiplication in third grade.  I will continue to show / model how to use traditional multiplication, but I will be teaching the students how to complete partial products and lattice multiplication.
This may be confusing for you in how to help your child.  I am including two videos for you to review these two multiplication strategies.  If you are still stuck, I encourage you to show your child how you would solve the problem and work with them using that strategy.  I think it is important for your child to see that there are many ways to solve math problems and that using any of these ways still gets you the answer.  If you child has many ways to solve a math problem, they are able to show flexible thinking and better number understanding.

Partial Product



Lattice Multiplication