Meteorology 101- Weather Project for Bloggers

Welcome meteorologists! Blog post due by Monday March 3, 2014

 Today you choose a topic about the weather to research more thoroughly.  Topics you may choose are:

• water cycle
• wind
• temperature
• air pressure
• clouds
• tornadoes
• hurricanes
• tsunami
• weather instruments
• historic weather events
• approved topic of choice- see me

Your job is to research and present your info to us in your choice of project that will be posted to your KidBlog.  Some project choices are:

• Power Point
• Voice Thread with photo uploads
• Animoto video
• your choice of other- see me

Ecosystems in the classroom

     4th grade is such a great time for students to learn about the Earth and how nature provides for all living organisms.  In science, each student creates an ecosystem out of soda bottles.  Right now, we have the bottom half of our ecosystems complete.

      The bottom of the ecosystem is the aquarium, which means that students observe mosquito fish, snails, and aquatic plants as they learn about the food chain/food web, animal adaptations, the water cycle and more!   Check out the Kid Blogs link on the right to find out what the kids have to say about their ecosystems. 

Class List 2013 Can you find your name?

If you click on it to make it bigger, let it load and choose "run" then it will appear full-size for you!

New classes

Hi kids! Right now I am on an airplane flying home from a great trip to Jamaica! I am super excited to hear who you got for 5th grade, what you did over the summer, or if you are just coming to 4th grade... We can see who else is in the class or answer any questions here! Hope to hear from you soon. Mrs. DiBattista

Getting ready for a new school year...

August already! Wow, we will be back in school before you know it! I've been pretty busy this summer, how about you? What have you been up to? I'm excited that we are heading to Jamaica this Monday. We are going to climb Dunn's River Falls, go 4 wheeling around the island, snorkel and enjoy family time. I'm interested in hearing about your vacations. Post your comments, ideas or questions here. Mrs. DiBattista

Best blog platform for elementary students

I can't believe the school year is winding down already! It was just September and most of the class didn't even know what a blog was, now each student has their own individual blog and some have started independent blogs. As a 4th grade teacher, I was worried about exposing students to the comments of the general public, so I decided to use the kidblog platform for student blogs and use blogspot for my teacher/classroom blog posts. Good thing! Kidblog is definitely the winner in my book for which blog to introduce students to. With kidblog, I monitor all of the comments and posts- it sounds like a pain, but it really isn't. I have a master "administrative" account in which I create student sub-accounts. Everything can be found on one page and no sneaky comments can slide through unless I don't monitor carefully enough. I have found that the blogspot platform is geared more for older students. I do love the widgets and gadgets that you can add on blogspot, but the security of it is lacking for young students. I have to delete a lot of "iffy" comments from people that include links to strange sites, so that is my main reason for promoting the kidblog site over the blogspot. Check out the link on the right to all of the kidblogs and you will see that the writing/commenting works just fine. No fancy gadgets or widgets, but maybe that will come with time. Let me know your thoughts!

Science PSSA sites

https://delicious.com/#kdibattista/4th%20grade%20Science follow this link to the Delicious bookmarking page where I've saved tons of great science sites for you!