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Ms. Kathryn Bonzo » About Ms. Bonzo

About Ms. Bonzo

 Welcome to 4th Grade!   Raise the Roof!
 
     A little background: My teaching career started in St. Augustine, Florida, after graduating from the University of South Alabama. Then, my husband and I lived, taught, and traveled overseas for almost a decade in Algeria, Singapore, and the Dominican Republic before coming to Idaho.  We moved here in 1994 with our daughter and have really enjoyed being involved in the community and participating in all kinds of outdoor opportunities. 
 
    I have taught and coached kids from preschool to high school. I graduated with a Master of Arts in Teaching majoring in History from the University of in 1999 and have always continued to add to my professional and content knowledge.
 
     A little about the present at MCS: The students in 4th Grade get to integrate what they have learned from K-3. It is a special year developmentally because kids at this age want to be active and make a difference in the world. One way that I like to help grow their curiosity and interests is to take them off campus for field trips and do my best to bring in experts (which are often parents:)).
 
 

Classes

Posts

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Cooperation is Golden! The activity was for the group to raise and lower the Golden Circle by balancing it--shared-- each person used one finger! It was funny and frustrating! 
After each group had a turn, we discussed how to improve the success of being able to work together. They came up with three ideas immediately! They will get to try them today.
It will give you a smile to hear that each group realized they should
1. slow down,
2. talk about how they will work together before they move, 
3. listen more, not talk over each other. 
The kids know a lot! Excellent words of advice for many of the things we do together! 
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Michelle and Amy organize their materials for the science experiment that tests how changes they make to the ramp or how they use the marble will affect how it interacts with the ramp.
We studied the history of Skateboards with our SuperSTEM and today the kids used materials in class to create their ramps and follow the steps. 
 
Each student will come home with their marble and the ramp. They can continue to test their ideas with you.
The marbles are from our  Mug of Marvelous Acts. They each used this marble earlier last week for voting too.
 
 
 
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Luna, holding her clipboard for taking notes, stands in front of one of the installations by Jeffrey Gibson at the WSU Museum of Art. Thanks to her cousin Zoey who joined us for the field trip and took a great picture!
 
 
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At Jordan Schnitzer Art Museum at WSU with Curator Kristin Becker and Interns.
The kids were learning about the exhibit before they interacted with it. 
 
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Luna, Lily, and Bruce collect the 35 pounds plastic dropped off during the Gas Outage!
 
Many more people in our community are recycling plastic! This is great! Remember, there is the first of each month drop-off at the Moscow Recycle Center.
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Raking Leaves at Paradise Creek of Olympus Health Care
(formally, Good Samaritan)
The kids worked well to get the area cleaned up!
24 bags in about 30 minutes!
They did some good community service!
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Charlotte and Brynn raking up!
 
The kids did a great job raking leaves yesterday for what used to be called Good Samaritan! They finally ended up with 24 bags of leaves in 30 minutes!
Everyone worked hard together and that was good to see. Some of the residents came out to watch the activity.
:)
This was a good treat for the kids to do for our community!
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Trick or Treaters
The class has great ideas about who they are and why as they explained in our Morning Meeting.
 
They need to know how much candy they collected so if they ask to bring the bag into school, it is so we can use the scale in class to weigh what they collected.
Some of the predictions are wild-- 25 lbs., 37 lbs., even 100 pounds!
The bags will be kept behind my desk during the day so no candy munching.
Also, I asked them to notice which direction they are facing when they receive their favorite candy. We had a short lesson on the compass this morning.
 
Have a Happy Halloween!
Sincerely, Witch Direction
 
 
 
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How to Sell a Rock!!
 
Amy is painting her rock to look like a cat! The kids participated in a lesson from UI Extension led by Ms. Richel about entrepreneurship.
 
The kids thought about how to create a business and the costs, marketing, time, and materials. The goal was to create a profit to do something they wanted with their earnings.
 
They did a lot of thinking and math calculations to find out if what they wanted to create they would be able to do. It was a good introduction to decision-making about finances and ideas that can generate money.
 
The prototype rock design will come home today. Let the kids test out their ideas on you!
 
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After Folding the Line (a fun way to get a random partner), the kids talked about their answers to reading to what they learned using the wizardingworld.com website to read the first 10 minutes of Chapter 1 of the Harry Potter Book I.
Reading with a narrator online is fabulous practice for learning new vocabulary pronunciation and sentence structure. 
The processing questions they shared were to help them dig into what they learned about the setting and characters.
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Two Interesting Fieldtrips in One Week
 
As we headed back to school after visiting the Moscow Public Library, the kids had time to play in beautiful East City Park. There was a good Social Studies lesson there too as they learned about the war memorial. This conversation helped to connect them in time to the start of the week when they were in the 1913 classroom. 
 
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 110 Years and it still works!! Black Board or White Board-- It means content practice!! 
 
Being able to put your math or writing thoughts down and figure out things is helpful. When the whole class does it, it allows everyone to see what each other is working on and they can share ideas and solutions.
Thank you to Jenny, and the teachers for a valuable day of learning!
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How Long Will the Solar Eclipse Last?
 
It was fun to talk about this event that hopefully we can see on Saturday morning. We talked about multi-step problems and analyzed the work on the board to see if all the steps were included to be able to explain the math thinking. This takes time to do because learning that they are storytelling is the key.
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Following Written Communication✍ from Another Classmember!
 
They had already been Mission Control. Now they are the astronauts of Apollo 13 having to make the Adapter so the air will filter the CO2 levels. 💡The experiment was about how what you write and say has to be clear so that someone could follow their directions!🌍 Luckily, this wasn't a life-or-death situation, but that is how we approached it because it was.🌌
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Lilian Focusing on Flowers and Plants that are in the AHM Garden
 
The activity to create an accurate map with the native plants from the garden was the task of orienting the map so that the features were correctly placed and identified.  Creating a graphic representation takes practice. This is a good example of being a scientist in the field and what it takes to do the work well. 
 
 
Check out my blogs from previous years:
2017-2018 School Year 
2016-2017 School Year
2015-2016 School Year
2014-2015 School Year