Proctorstock 2019

Proctorstock

By: Student Blogger Leo

“Get up and dance to the music!” On March 22nd the fourth and fifth grade students got together in the gym and performed a concert called Proctorstock. We did Proctorstock to celebrate Woodstock's 50th anniversary. We were all dressed like hippies. Most of the students’ favorite song was “Dance To The Music” and when they performed it they had a dance to go with it.

Thank you Miss Swanson for creating this fun show!

A visitor from India

India presentation

By: Student Blogger Akash

On Monday, April 1st, Vinitha Muraleedharan (my mom), came into our classroom to talk about the process that she had to go through to enter United States and to become an American citizen. She also told us the things that she misses about her home country India. Vinitha made a slideshow for the presentation.  She started off by speaking about her early life.Vinitha grew up in Mangalore and moved to Bangalore when she was eighteen. She started kindergarten when she was THREE! Can you believe that! She speaks Malayalam and she is from Kharala. She misses many Indian holidays such as, Vishu and Onam. Of course, those aren’t all Indian holidays, but those are the traditional holidays for people in Kharala.

In school Vinitha had to wear uniforms every day from kindergarten to high school. Only on your birthday there is an exception. On your birthday you can wear what you want. But, it has to be formal.

She also taught us how she applied for her United States citizenship and about having a student visa, then work visa, and then green card. The slideshow brought up many spectacular conversations and questions.

Thank you for visiting our classroom and teaching us!

Arithmetickles

On Wednesday, March 27th, Proctor Elementary School's fourth graders were treated to a special math enrichment program from Arithmetickles.  Arithmetickles is an interactive Math Game Show that uses audience participation and comedy in fast-paced math segments to capture the attention of students.

Tales first-hands from other lands

As part of our fourth grade Social Studies curriculum, Team Gibbas students learned about how different groups of people immigrated to the United States and contributed to the present day culture of the United States.  Students learned that people come to the United States for different reasons, experience different challenges, and contribute to American society in different ways.  To enhance our study of immigration we invited Team Gibbas family members that were first generation immigrants to visit our classroom and to share their first hand experiences on what it was like growing up in a different country and immigrating to the United States.

Thank you so much to the Team Gibbas family members that came into the classroom to teach us about immigrating from India, Australia, Ireland, and El Salvador!  We learned so much from you!

Akash's mother taught us about immigrating from India.

Maddie's dad taught us about immigrating from Australia.

Christian's mom taught us about immigrating from Ireland.

She even taught us how to do an Irish step dance!

Zach (a.k.a. Michael Jackson)'s grandmother taught us about immigrating from El Salvador.

Wax Museum 2019

If you could become a famous person for a day, who would you be?  Many fourth grade students answered that question on Friday, April 12th when they became a famous person as part of Proctor Elementary School's annual Wax Museum.  Students read biographies of famous people then wrote speeches that detailed the important events of that person's life.  Students also dressed the part and became wax characters that only "came to life" when a flashlight was shone on them.  Team Gibbas fourth graders did a marvelous job memorizing their speeches and personifying these famous individuals. 

Can you guess who the famous individuals are depicted in these pictures?

Can you create a landform from a topographic map?

Team Gibbas students have been learning about landforms and topographic maps in science.  This week students were partnered up and tasked with the assignment to create a landform out of a clay.  Next students measured the height of their landform in centimeters. Then students used dental floss to cut their landform into 1 cm. wide discs and traced each disc onto graph paper to create a topographic map.  Finally, there was a challenge.  A different partner group was given the topographic map and they had to try to create a landform that matched the original by using the topographic map.

Students did a fabulous job learning about landforms and how to create and read topographic maps!

Grade 4 Common Core Standard: 4-ESS2-2: Analyze and interpret maps of Earth's mountain ranges, deep ocean trenches, volcanoes, and earthquake epicenters to describe patterns of these features and their locations relative to boundaries between continents and oceans.