Santa Shop is Coming to Town

Preview Video: https://youtu.be/QLA1Qd7hgZ4

Unit 3 - Humanities Cornerstone - Critical Thinker: Early Explorers

For their most recent design challenge, scholars chose an early settlement in Texas and designed an artifact for a museum that could represent the influence of the early explorers/colonization in that location. They researched their area to learn which explorers or settlers had the greatest impact on that area as well as the main reason people explored or colonized the area (economic opportunity, competition, or the desire for expansion).

Options:

- Galveston - Cabeza de Vaca

- Fort St. Louis - La Salle

- San Antonio, Nacogdoches, El Paso - Spanish Missions and Presidios

- Nacogdoches - Spanish Rachos and Vaqueros

- San Felipe - The Austin Colony

(More photos to come soon!)

Hour of Code Week

Our fourth grade scholars welcomed 8th grade STEMbassadors into their classrooms today for an Hour of Code lesson. The STEMbassadors presented a Binary Images lesson.

Binary Images - Though many people think of binary as strictly zeros and ones, our previous courses taught students that information can be represented in a variety of binary options. This lesson takes that concept one step further as it illustrates how a computer can store even more complex information (such as images and colors) in binary, as well.

Unit 2 - Humanities Cornerstone - Pattern Detector: "The First Texans"

Scholars did a fantastic job working together with students who had also researched their American Indian tribe to design and create shelters. Scholars wrote placards for their designs that explained how where their tribe lived affected how they lived. 

Students then joined new groups with those who researched different tribes, and they looked for patterns on how regions affected the American Indians’ way of life, once again reflecting on the question: How does where you live affect how you live. 

Coahuiltecan

 Caddo

Comanche

Jumano  

 

Kiowa

Karankawa

Tonkawa

Wichita

Lipan Apache

Karankawa

Tonkawa

Lipan Apache

Comanche

Wichita

Jumano

Family STEM Night

Thank you to everyone who attended Cannon's Family STEM Night! We enjoyed seeing scholars work through the Engineering Design Process with their family members to complete the challenge!

REMINDER!

Don't forget to come to Family Engineering Night tonight! 5:30-7:00! Have your scholar bring their ipad! Hope to see you there!

Watts Going on in Fourth Grade

Week of November 14-18

Can you believe it is almost time for Thanksgiving break?! We can't either but we are looking forward to the exciting things that are in store for this week. 

We hope to see ALL of our families on Thursday night for Family Engineering Night. It is from 5:30-7:00 pm. Your scholar will love to show you what they have been working on and participate in a design challange. 

Another exciting opportunity happening this week is Grandparents/Grandfriends Day! This Friday, 11/18 from 8:00-10:00 am, we welcome our grandparents/grandfriends to school for a fun experience. More information about this can be found below. 

Finally, our Scholastic Book Fair will be open all week (even on Family Engineering Night)!

We hope everyone has a great week and then a great week off for Thanksgiving! We will see you on Monday the 28th! 

Family Engineering Night

Our annual Family Engineering Night is scheduled for this Thursday, November 17th. Cannon families are invited to come to school to participate in a fun engineering design challange with their student(s). This is a great way to learn more about what your scholar is doing at school and what exactly STEM looks like in their classroom. Check out what each grade level will be doing on that night!

Grandparent/Grandfriend Day! 

We are excited to invite Grandparents/Grandfriends to come visit out school on Friday, November 18th from 8:00-10:00 am. 

Information was sent home on Monday and if you missed it, it can be found here. 

You can register a grandparent/grandfriend by clicking here. 

Guests should arrive at 8 am and their day will begin in the cafeteria with breakfast refreshments and a special welcome by Mrs. Blizzard. Guests will then be escorted to classrooms of their grandchildren to spend time in their class sharing memeories, and participating in fun activities. Scholars will also be able to take their guest to the Book Fair, as well as a STEM Technology museum we will have set up to showcase the latest and greatest technology we use in school today. 

A Note From Nurse Kendra

Our Cannon clinic is running low on clothes and needs donations! If you are cleaning out closets over the holiday break, please consider donating elastic or adjustable waist shorts and pants to Nurse Kendra. all sizes are appreciated! Also, if your scholar borrows clothes from the clinic, please was and return the items. Thanks!

2016 Campus Wide Community Service Project

Each year, our campus participates in a campus-wide community service effort during the holiday season. In the past, we have collected donations to present to organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, Soles for Souls, Heifer Foundation, and more! We try to find a way to make a direct classroom connection to each year's project.

This year, our community service project will be to make blanket donations to an organization called Project Linus. Each classroom will be making a "No-Sew Fleece" blanket. We we will collect these handmade blankets & present them to a local chapter of Project Linus. This organization collect blankets locally and distributes them to children in hospitals, shelters, social service agencies, or anywhere that a child might be in need of a big hug. Our scholars will be so excited to know that they had the opportunity to make & donate a blanket that will be used in this way!

If you can help out this effort by donating large pieces of Polar Fleece fabric (1.5 yards or larger - 50"-60" wide), we would greatly appreciate your help! Please leave any donations in the front office before December 1st. Thank you!

Holiday Food Donation

Each year, Cannon staff and students collect food items for holiday baskets to be delivered to a Cannon family in need. Each grade level has specific items that are collected to help create these food baskets. Our counselor and the students in our KC Club will be working together to organize & deliver these holiday baskets during the next several weeks. Please see the lists below for grade level requests. Thank you for your donations to help those in need during the holiday season!

Science Update

On Halloween our scholars had the opportunity to take a field trip to Rock Ledge Park in Grapevine.
Scholars had the chance to go to 5 different stations. At one station, they focused on the different layers/types of soil found here. At another scholars learned where our water came from and explored what a watershed is and how it affects the world around us. Scholars also took a small hike down the shore at Grapevine Lake. It was an amazing opportunity to see real world examples of weathering and erosion that has happened in our own back yard since the floods in 2015. It was crazy to see how high the water had gotten and how it had changed the land around it. Lastly, scholars had the opportunity to explore water retention once more with soil from the ground found in this area.

After the field trip, our scholars used actual stream tables test some questions they had created the week before. Based on observations from our previous stream table lab, scholars wrote down I wonder statements. We took these statements and created 5 questions they could answer using stream tables. Scholars were put into groups and they design and tested their experiment.

Scholars spent the next week taking their observations and data from their stream table labs and our field trip to the lake to write a CER (claim, evidence, reasoning) about how erosion changes the way our Earth looks over time. 

As we wrapped up weathering, erosion and deposition, we dove into natural resources. By now, most scholars know what a natural resource is and most even know the difference between renewable and nonrenewable resources. We did a quick modeling activity with beans to show how renewable resources are slowly replenished over time and if we are not careful, we will eventually run out of our nonrenewable resources such as oil, coal and natural gas.
For scholars to gain a better understanding of how oil and natural gas are formed, we created a model with bread and different gummy creatures. The bread represent layers of sediment and the gummy creatures represented the dead plants and animals that would have floated to the bottom of the ocean. Over millions of years, the organic matter would be covered by more and more layers of sediment and the heat and pressure (aka the textbook we put on top) would eventually change the organic matter into oil and natural gas. Scholars took a blind core sample to see if they struck oil! Some were successful, not all were so lucky.