Today was the fourth grade witting celebration! It was an end-of-year celebration, reflecting on the many skills and concepts learned this year. They learned to write narratives, persuasive essays, poetry, and nonfiction essays. They learned to write full sentences, edit for run-on sentences, write paragraphs with topic sentences and detail sentences, to elaborate, and so much more. Their stamina has grown this year.  Students shared aloud something they have learned this year, shared their poetry anthologies and nonfiction paragraphs, taught a writing skill, helped to put that skill into practice and created a piece of writing in a small group, and shared the created writing pieces aloud.

We are so lucky to not only have a greenhouse here at Leverett Elementary School, but to also have Dawn, an incredibly knowledgeable plant expert. Fourth graders visit the greenhouse and learn from Dawn each spring. One of the fourth grade standards is to understand that plants have structures, to identify them, and to describe their differences. To do this, we grow garlic in the classroom and learn from Dawn. This year, we spent time working in and around the greenhouse, and had Dawn visit our classroom. At the greenhouse, we made a plant structures salad, examining the parts of plants that common foods in salads are. Building on their knowledge of plant structures, students learned about seed dispersal and were challenged to create a seed, identify which way it would travel, and to test out the creation. Today, students worked in stations at the greenhouse. They planted their garlic, planted pumpkin seeds, weeded, turned compost, beatified the fairy garden, cleaned out the bird baths, and watered the flowers. It is important for learning to be hands-on whenever possible.

Fourth grade inventors shared their creative inventions at the 2018 LES Invention Fair. Each student came up with an invention idea, built the invention, assembled a poster presentation, and prepared a verbal presentation. They were very proud of their hard work. Fourth graders enjoyed the invention unit and sharing their work with everyone that came to the invention fair.