Waiting for Superman...Nope, we Have plenty of our own super heroes!

Well, NECAPs are finally over and the 4th graders really worked hard. We are so proud of the effort and perseverance that they exhibited throughout the past two weeks.  We celebrated today with a visit from author/ illustrator Dan Santat. To prepare for his visit each 4th grader created their own super hero mask, a theme that goes along with Mr. Santat's book, Sidekick's.

Columbus Day Parade Fun

Ashaway Elementary School PTO put together an amazing float for the annual Columbus Day parade. The theme was "Reading Oasis", and they truly created a beautiful oasis! Mr. Ornburn and I were in the truck towing the float. It was so much fun people watching our way down the parade route. I saw so many Ashaway friends along the way. The Ashaway kids did a great job handing out books and dancing their way down the streets.  Here are a few pictures of  the float and the friends I spotted along the way. What a great day!

Fun in Math

This week we have been learning about factors and multiples using the area model.  Students used colored tiles to create all the possible rectangular, area models to represent a given number. This helped them find the factor pairs of that number. Once they discovered the factor pairs they were able to determine whether the number was prime or composite.

They were able to see the relationship between factors and multiples by creating area models to help them skip count by a given number. They realized that the multiples of a number were actually the multiplication table of a given number.  For example, one set of three is three, two sets of three is six, etc.

They played several different games, Prime or Composite, Factor Flip and Buzz, to help them practice the skills they worked on all week. Math can be fun!

Yikes, That Guy was Tall!

Our students have worked hard this week on NECAP testing. Next week we will continue with math testing. To get them ready and continue their hard work we had more guests come in today. This morning three URI men's basketball players joined us to let the third and fourth graders know how important it is to keep up good grades.  They explained that although they are great athletes, without good grades they wouldn't be allowed to play.  Thanks to Mrs. Bliven for arranging this for us!

Mr. Morrone, Molly O'Brien and NECAPs...OH MY!

Tomorrow the third and fourth graders will begin NECAP testing. This week will will be testing Tuesday through Thursday, next week it will be Wednesday through Friday. All third and fourth graders will receive free breakfast each of the testing days ( as long as they are in school on time). Please make sure your child gets a good night sleep and is at school on time each day. We know they will all work hard and do a great job.

To help get us psyched up and ready to go we had two special guests today! Mr. Morrone skyped in with us to give the students a pep talk. It was great to see his smiling face on the big screen! The kids were able to ask him questions about his new job, the middle school and whether he has seen any of their siblings. He even gave us a virtual tour of his new office.

Our second guest was channel 10 traffic and technology reporter, Molly O'Brien. She spoke to students about her education and the hard work she has had to do to be on the news each day. She chronicled her life from the Seattle area to Rhode Island. I'm sure we will have some budding newscasters after today!

How does the speed of the water affect the amount of soil eroded and the amount of soil deposited?

This was our focus question in science today. Students ran their stream table and observed where water ran fast and where it slowed down. They made some great observations about how fast water caused more erosion and deposition. They saw evidence of this in their stream table by looking at the beach area that was formed and by noticing the amount of gravel that was now showing. They did some great writing! They are a class of great science thinkers.