Sonja Johansson is the grandmother of BFS fourth grader Toby and first grader Lena. In the fall she sent Lower School Fourth Grade Head Teacher Bea Bartolotta the book Freedom Over Me: Eleven Slaves, Their Lives and Dreams Brought to Life by Ashley Bryan, a Newbury Award-winning and Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Honored […]
In early May, six fourth grade teachers, led by Head Teacher Bea Bartolotta and 4C Head Teacher Amy Hertz, journeyed with their 66 students to New York State’s oldest house of worship, the Old Quaker Meeting House in Flushing. The structure, built in 1694 is the second oldest house of worship in the […]
In social studies, fourth grade students learned about New Amsterdam and how New York City evolved over time. As part of their unit, they built a model of what the Dutch settlement in today’s Lower Manhattan would look during the 17th century. We used the iPad app iMotion HD Pro to add animation to their […]
Design thinking was introduced last week to students as part of our unit on 3D design. Students learned about the stages of the design process: empathizing with the users of the design, defining the problem, ideating possible solutions, prototyping the design, testing the prototypes, and the evolving the product created. Students were asked to come […]
4A & 4B began their research work this week using EasyBib in their first integrated library and technology classes. Both classroom teachers (Razi & Elif and Bea & John), literacy specialist (Sarah), Lower School librarians (Kathy & Christina), and technology teacher (Tracy) were on hand to help students look at the books about their research […]
Using Code Studio, third and fourth grade students have been working on creating more intricate and complicated patterns using their understanding of geometry and computer code. Some students have discovered the use of nested loops while creating these patterns and others have learned that changing only a few values in their code can create big […]
Our third and fourth graders have been busy working on refining their coding skills, including the use of loops and nested loops, on Code Studio. Students have been applying their understanding of perimeter, angles in geometry, and basic addition and subtraction to solve the coding puzzles in technology class. In fact, we are proud to […]
Our third and fourth graders engaged in two fun and unplugged activities (no computers!) to learn about loops and functions in technology class this week. In third grade, students learned that computers are really good at repeating a task over and over again without ever needing to stop for a snack, use the bathroom, or […]
Both our third and fourth grade students are in the thick of using Code Studio to learn about coding concepts such as sequences, events, variables and loops. Code Studio uses a game-based environment to teach coding and often uses popular games that are already familiar to our Lower School students. By engaging our students in […]
Our third and fourth graders have started their unit on coding with an introduction to “Computational Thinking” or strategies for problem solving. The strategies include decomposition (i.e., breaking a problem apart), pattern matching (i.e., noticing a phenomenon that repeats), abstraction (i.e., pulling out differences to find a “rule” that works for multiple problems), and algorithm […]
The 4th grade ended the 2014 year with our unit on augmented reality and an integrated Library and Technology class project. First, we thought about the meaning of the words “augmented” and “reality”. As a class, we determined that “augmented reality” means adding extra information to what we see in the real world. Then, we […]
