Is Pepper Spraying a Second Grader Appropriate?

Recently, a story from Colorado made national news. An 8-year old named Aiden threw a temper tantrum and would refuse to cooperate with teachers and police. After a long standoff the police decided to pepper spray Aiden to get him to cooperate. Please watch this video that details the story and write a reaction to it.

Is it appropriate for adults to pepper spray a child when they are acting violently and not cooperating?

Spring Break!

Hey fourth graders!

Take a few minutes to think about your Spring Break. Write a short summary of your week off and tell your classmates your favorite part of your break. Be sure to use quality writing skills using correct punctation and well written sentences.

Once you have written your summary. Read about some classmates break's and comment on them.

Current Event: Disaster in Japan

Last week Japan suffered the largest earthquake in its history. The earthquake triggered a tsunami wave that destroyed coastal cities in Northern Japan. Now, Japan is facing a nuclear threat because the reactors were damaged during the quake.

The video shows some of the images of the disaster in Japan. Please watch the video and reflect on these three questions. Write a response answering these questions with complete sentences and proper spelling/punctuation.

1. What do natural disasters teach you?
2. What do you think are some next steps in rebuilding the cities that were destroyed?
3. What other thoughts do you have about the disasters in Japan?

Reflection on Writing Commentaries

This commentary by Andy Rooney was one example of a commentary that we watched before we began our unit. Now that we have just finished one of our biggest writing assignments of the year. We can look back and reflect on what we learned. The commentaries that you wrote gave you experience in persuasive writing. For this week’s post, please answer the following questions about the commentaries that you wrote and heard from classmates.


What did you learn from writing a commentary?

Which commentary did you learn the most from after hearing it?

What was your favorite part of this assignment?

How Are You Feeling About CSAP?

What are your feelings about CSAP?
Write a reflection on how you feel about the tests and the importance of taking the test seriously.

WATSON...is he smarter than you?

IBM revealed a supercomputer named WATSON recently on the game show Jeopardy. WATSON is one of the first supercomputers to be tested against humans in a trivia game show. This is intended to be a display of the capabilities of computers in the future.

Watch the video and answers these few questions:
1. Do you think computers will become more intelligent that humans?
2. Are supercomputers good or bad? Why?
3. What are your thoughts on this topic?

Not Enough Exercise?

We read last week about how studies are showing that kids are not getting enough exercise by simply playing team sports. It seems interesting that when we think about exercise we almost always think about sports.

Last year, First Lady Michelle Obama began a program to try to help with the problem of childhood obesity (kids being highly overweight). Watch this video and write a reaction explaining how you feel about this topic.


Some possible responses could include:
1. Why obesity is or is not a problem?
2. What habits you have to try to prevent becoming obese? (eating right, exercising)
3. How this topic makes you feel?