Nonfiction Surgery

Welcome to Howe-Manning Hospital! 4th-grade doctors earned their medical license (nonfiction medical license that is) and performed a day of surgeries. Upon entering Howe-Manning Hospital and Teaching Hospital, medical students took their Medical Board Exam to obtain their surgical license. Medical students needed to apply everything they have been learning about nonfiction text features in order to pass their "exam". After congratulations, handshake, and official job offer from the chief of surgery (aka Dr. Klipfel) doctors scrubbed in and dressed for surgery.

 Once surgical teams were ready it was time to meet patients, read patient charts to learn their symptoms, and determine a diagnosis. Symptoms included confusion on finding where to locate information in a nonfiction text, complaints of not knowing what sections were about in nonfiction, and even difficulty knowing what words in nonfiction texts meant. Luckily patients were in the right place and doctors were ready to help. 

Doctors determined which nonfiction text feature organ patients needed. They prepared organs with scalpels (scissors) and stitched them back up (with bandaids). They then made sure to complete their post-op reports.

Luckily every patient made it through surgery and no doctors suffered any malpractice suits.

Nonfiction Book Tasting

Chef Klipfel whet appetites for nonfiction this past week when we opened Klipfel Cafe and served up scrumptious nonfiction courses. During our book tasting, patrons were able to get a taste of their interest level for our upcoming nonfiction unit and even find some books for future reading.

Even though our ocean animal table was a little salty and mummy course a little dry, we are happy to report that our opening afternoon of Klipfel Cafe resulted in a 5-star Yelp rating.

Everything was delectable right down to the last nibble!

Poetry Cafe

Roses are red, violets are blue. Miss Klipfel's Class says, Thank you! Thank you all for attending and helping make our poetry cafe a HUGE success. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your warm smiles, feverish snaps, and uncontainable chuckles. Without our wonderful audience, our poetry cafe wouldn't have been such a success. Congratulations to all the 4th graders for taking a risk performing their poems, sharing their musical abilities, artistic skills, and hidden talents. Impressive is an understatement! We also can't thank you enough for your kind words, emails, and comments of encouragement. We hope the rest of your February is filled with chocolates, hearts, and lots of love. Make sure to check out all our published poems here & here:

Klipper Bowl VII

Are you ready for some fffooooootball? 4th graders were geared up and ready to go for the sixth annual Klipper Bowl. Teams were introduced while blasting their team chosen song, then we completed warm-up stretches, huddled up for last minute strategies, and then stood for the national anthem. Next up was our coin toss for kickoff return placement. Lucky teams who guessed the coin toss correctly had a 20-yard kickoff return while others started on the 10-yard line. Using perseverance and grit, teams quickly caught up.

Teams then ran "plays" from their playbook to gain yardage on the field. "Plays" included using different forms of texts (articles, media, poems, etc.) and completing activities. Players learned about who invented football and completed a comprehension activity worth 50 yards. Teams read a Wonderoplois article explaining what makes the Super Bowl so super and then completed a Google form for 30 yards. Teams could choose to run a play and apply all their figurative language knowledge to create football similes, metaphors, alliterations, personifications, and onomatopoeias.

The plays worth the most yards involved correctly placing team logos for all the Southeast region teams (yes, we have been learning all about the Southeast in Social Studies). Other plays included reading a passage about Tom Brady, learning about the history of the Super Bowl, placing fraction footballs on the correct place on the field, and reading a football poem to determine the mood and purpose all for different amounts of yards.

Once teams correctly completed a play, they brought it to Referee Klipfel for the final check and to advance on the field. After gaining enough yardage to make it down the field, teams scored a touchdown! Complete with touchdown dances! Teams then got to throw for point conversions. Team cooperation and good sportsmanship earned extra yards or kicks for points at ANY time throughout the game. "Good job", "keep working hard", and other forms of encouragement were heard around the field all day. No yellow flags needed to be thrown.

Referee Klipfel and teams had one SUPER day! Klipper Bowl VII is complete so now onto baseball season.