The Most Important Questions

In fifth grade we read a story called The Three Questions.  The main character, Nikolai is on a quest to find answers to his three most important questions:

When is the most important time?

Who is the most important one?

What is the right thing to do?

After the Thanksgiving break we are going to be thinking about the power of questions.  I would love it if you would take a moment to post to the Padlet below the three questions you think the most important.  I hope you will share this post with other friends and family members.  The ideas posted will help us jump start our lesson on questions.  I welcome the kids to share their ideas too, from the youngest to the oldest.  🙂

4th Grade: Multiple Intelligences

Last week the fourth graders participated in a survey that revealed ways they are smart…the Multiple Intelligences, according to Howard Gardner. Before deciding if they agree with the results, they are having a chance to work with each of the intelligences and learn more about each one, through various centers.  Enjoy some of their work so far.

Using our Mathematical Intelligence to Make Graphs:

By Carson

By Braden

Visual Spatial Intelligence: Taking photographs of the best part of us.  They used photo editing apps on the iPad to improve their picture.

By Caitlin

By Jackie

Naturalistic Intelligence: Ranking the intelligences from most to least importance from different perspectives.

Here are some pictures of the kids in action.  They are just getting started, so I look forward to seeing what they do after the holidays.

Multiple Intelligences in Action on PhotoPeach

4th Grade: Mystery of Me

In fourth grade we are studying Mysteries and what better mystery to start on then the mystery of self! 

Mystery: Something that is difficult or impossible to understand.  A person or thing that is puzzling or unknown.

Last week the 4th graders chose 4 objects in the room and were asked to create similes or metaphors comparing themselves to the objects.  This allowed the kids to start thinking about who they are and to reveal a little of the mystery to the rest of us.  The slideshows below are their finished projects. Enjoy.

This week I had the kids look at a Wordle of a quote by Howard Gardner. They had to unscramble the words to create a sentence that made sense.  I always love the way the kids interpret and organize words of famous quotes.

Kamyryn: It’s NOT how smart you are, it’s how smart you are not.

Carson: It’s not how you are smart, it’s how you are YOU smart.

We had a lively discussion about Kamryn and Carson’s interpretations.  The consensus on Kamryn’s was that you need to focus on always wondering, growing and learning, to not be satisfied with how you are already smart.  Everyone agreed that Carson’s interpretation was about knowing yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, and using those things to push you forward.

It’s not how smart you are, it’s how you are smart.

-Howard Gardner

After revealing the actual quote, the kids took a pre-test on Multiple Intelligences to help me understand what they know currently and how we can develop our learning.  The kids then took a survey on Multiple Intelligences. We will look carefully at the results of the survey and what it all means.

To close out our day, the kids created a cover for the Mystery of Me book they will be making throughout the year.  Enjoy their covers.

Mystery of Me Covers on PhotoPeach

4th Grade: One Minute Mysteries

After attempting to use clues to help solve some quick, one minute mysteries, the 4th graders decided to try and create their own. I think that we all learned a lot about our first attempt, mostly that  it is not all that easy to write a mystery without giving away too many clues and/or not giving enough clues.  We all look forward to our next attempt.  In the mean time, enjoy our first go.