Color Poems

After learning about the poetic tools of alliteration, repetition, personification, similes, and metaphors, Team Gibbas students put these tools to use and created original Color Poems.

Massachusetts Writing Standard: MA.3.A. Write stories, poems, and scripts that use similes and/or metaphors.

Northeast Slide Presentations

As part of our study of the United States' regions, Team Gibbas students created slide presentations about each northeast state.  Today in class, students had the opportunity to present their presentations to each other.  Click the arrows on the slide presentations below to see the students' hard work and to learn about the states in the Northeast Region.

Massachusetts Grade 4 Social Studies Standards Regions of the United States: 4.10  Identify the states, state capitals, and major cities in each region. (G) 4.11  Describe the climate, major physical features, and major natural resources in each region. (G)

Data Collection through Class Challenges

Essential Questions:  How can we create line graphs and bar models from data that we've collected?

Team Gibbas has been learning about bar graphs and line graphs as part of Chapter 4 in Math in Focus.  To give students some fun, hands-on, and authentic opportunities to create a bar graph and line graph students participated in two classroom challenges.

To generate data for a line graph, which displays data that changes over time, students were challenged to see how long they could stay in a wall squat.

To generate data for a bar graph, students participated in a dice challenge to see how many dice each student could balance on a popsicle stick held stable in the student's mouth.

Massachusetts Math Standard 3.MD  Draw a scaled bar graph to represent a data set with several categories.

Mystery Skype

Last week we had our very first Mystery Skype.   We looked forward to figuring out where the classroom we were skyping with was on the map and which state they were in.   We had to ask lots of questions in order to find out where they lived.    Some of the questions that we asked were, "Are you in North America?"  The class that we were skyping with said, "Yes!"  Also one of the other questions asked was, "Are you east of the Mississippi River?"  The other class answered, "No."   We finally guessed where they were - Nebraska! They guessed where we were too, Massachusetts!  We had so much fun and we hope that we will be able to have another Mystery Skype soon. 
Written by:  Class Reporter - Abby Photos taken by: Class Photographer - Tristan

Working as a team to figure out where the mystery classroom is

Class Reporter and Note Taker hard at work

Owl Pellets

Can we discover what an owl eats by dissecting an owl pellet? Before Thanksgiving break Team Gibbas students had the opportunity to learn about an owl's food chain by dissecting owl pellets!  Students discovered that their owls had eaten a variety of things, including birds and mice.  Students were able to look at bones under a microscope and match the bones they found to a chart before attempting to draw a skeleton of one of the creatures that they found in the pellet.

Massachusetts Science Standards:

Energy and Living Things (Grades 3 - 5)

11. Describe how energy derived from the sun is used by plants to produce sugars (photosynthesis) and is transferred within a food chain from producers (plants) to consumers to decomposers.