ChickeringThe Tsongas Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts was visited by all fourth graders in September. We wondered why we all go, so to learn, more we talked with our teacher, Mrs. Grady. Eat a Twinkie in your comfy chair while you listen to our chat.
We wanted to share some photographs we took while on the field trip. Enjoy!
Reported By Oliver and Jackson
ChickeringDo you like Bingo? Here is how our classroom plays Bingo.
We hope you enjoy listening to our chat with our teacher, Mrs. Kraeutler, and our Class Reward Bingo.
Reported by Finnegan and Oscar
ChickeringEvery year at Chickering School we have an Open House. 
Since students don’t attend Open House, we asked our teacher, Mrs.Atkinson, what happens. 
Please sit back and have a cup of tea as you learn about our Open House.
Reported by Sam and Stephen
Chickering
This year fourth grade science changed. We talked with our teacher, Miss Hilliard, to learn about the changes. Have some tea and biscuits while you listen to our chat.
Reported by … Nik, Boden, and Antonis
When the students at Chickering School are in the third grade, they may choose band or reporters for part of their fourth grade curriculum. If students decide to join band they have a choice between these instruments: trumpet, saxophone, flute, trombone, percussion, clarinet and french horn.
Band meets once a week for practice and their homework is to use Smart Music, (an App that helps you practice). Mr. Galligan is able to hear, through the App, the musician’s practice.
In May, Chickering School has Arts Night and the fourth grade band performs, for the first time, as part of the concert.
Some students may choose reporters, while their classmates are attending band. The reporters meet in the library once a week with Mrs. Chase. They collaborate with each other about choosing a topic and reporting about what is happening in the school. The students decide what media tool to use for their projects such as: interviews, surveys, photos and/or videos. Homework depends upon what projects they are working on at the time. We do a lot of writing regardless of the media tools we use. We publish to the world via our Blog called Chickering Reports.
We decided to survey the fourth grade to see why people chose band or reporters. We brainstormed questions for the survey. And used Google forms to create our survey.
73 of 87 – 4th grade students completed the survey which is 84% of the grade. First we inquired what they chose.
As you can see 61% of the students who responded chose band and 34% chose reporters.
If they chose band, we asked why. Of the 47 students, 12 did not answer this question; 24 replied that they like music and learning how to play an instrument; 5 said they were interested in playing the flute; and 1 each replied looking 
forward to playing the trumpet, loves percussion, heard it was fun, wants to learn a new instrument, liked listening to other students play their instruments, and didn’t want to do reporters.
We were curious to know which instrument the fourth grade band students chose.
Why did band students choose these instruments, we asked. Of the 47 band students who answered the survey, 1 did not answer, 30 said they liked the sound their instrument made, 2 thought it was cool, 3 said their brother could help them, 2 liked percussion, 3 wanted to try something new, 2 said they liked the flute, 1 said trombone because it had no keys, 1 said they liked the trumpet, and one didn’t know what to do so they chose percussion.
Next we decided to ask the band students if they have homework or not. We gave them three choices: yes, no, or sometimes. Out of the 47 band students, 30 said yes, 16 said sometimes, and 1 said no.
34% chose reporters. We were curious to know 
why they chose reporters over band. There were a lot of unique and unusual answers. 5 said reporters because it is fun, 4 said they didn’t want play an instrument or play a new one, 4 said their interested in technology and interviewing, 3 said they liked to do projects, 2 said they liked typing, 1 said they liked to make videos, 1 because they didn’t want to carry an instrument, 1 – their friends do it, 1 liked reading and writing, 1 wanted to see what it was like, 1 didn’t know, and one didn’t answer.
We also asked the 27 reporter students if they had homework or not. 23 students answered sometimes, 2 said yes, and the last two said no.
We were curious about what projects each 4th grade reporter groups chose.
We were interested to see why students participated in either band or reporters. Surprisingly, half of us thought there would be more reporters than band. We were disappointed that we didn’t hear back from 16% of the students. Clearly, the data shows that the students like having a choice between band (66%) and reporters (34%).
Reported by Beatrice, Neal, Bella, and Ronan
ChickeringMrs. Merritt was our third grade teacher in 2016-2017. She is an amazing teacher and we had an opportunity to talk with her. Sit back, relax and enjoy our chat with Mrs. Merritt.
Reported by: Bridget, Trystyn, and Rain
Have you ever been to the Tsongas Museum? All the fourth graders visit this historic museum each year. We chatted with our teacher, Mrs. Atkinson, to learn about this field trip. We hope you enjoy listening to our conversation.
Reported by Alex, Lyla, and Raina
Chickering
Today you will hear about our class reward system. We hope you enjoy our chat with our teacher, Ms. Hilliard.
Reported by Reema and Malachi
Have you ever been to Dover Days? It is a annual event in September which occurs in Dover, Massachusetts U.S.A. It’s been going on for 32+ years. Families and friends come on that day to have some fun.
Dover Days, this year, occured on September 9, 2017 on the town common. Many nonprofit organizations use this event as a fundraiser. People come at 9:00 am – 4:00pm. It was a beautiful, sunny, warm fall day.
There are many fun games and activities. In the dunk tank, are usually teachers and parents from Chickering School (an elementary school). This is a favorite activity for students, especially dunking a teacher! For younger children, there is a petting zoo with pigs and a bouncy house. For teens and adults, there is a 5K race for those who like to run.
Before you can play games, you have to purchase tickets. Most of the games require 2 tickets to play. There are games for little kids like the lollipop tree. There are lollipops with color on the end of the lollipop stick. Each colors tell you how many tokens you get, like 10, 5, 3, 2, and 1. If you are daring, you can play the duck pool. This is how the game works, first you remove your shoes then you try to pick up a duck with your toes. On the bottom of the duck is the number of your winning tokens. The wheel of fortune is when you spin a wheel, and whatever number it lands on is the number of tokens you get. This is a popular choice for kids. There is also a bean bag toss for all ages.
Once you collect all of your tokens you can head 
to the prize stand to redeem your tokens. In the prize station, there are lots of candy, notebooks, pencils, toys, and many more options. Each toy or candy is worth a different number of tokens. If you want a small piece of candy, it is 1 token. If you want a large one, it would be 5 tokens. Some toys are 5 or 10 tokens, others are 15 and 20.
Do you like food? There were lots of food choices at Dover Days including cotton candy, italian ice and ice cream. If you want something savory there are also hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and french fries on the side. If you’re a bit thirsty, you can have a fizzy drink, like a soda but if you prefer not to, there is also water. If you want something without gluten then there is also some fresh salad. In addition there is a stand with cans of fresh honey. As you can see there are food choices for everyone.
Dover Days is for anyone young to old, hungry to full, … everyone! There are lots of choices for activities and of course, food. Now that you’ve heard about Dover Days, we hope you go next year. Trust us, it’s loads of fun!
Reported by Caroline and Elis
ChickeringMrs. Chiavarini is new to fourth grade and is teaching the Plant Unit. We had an opportunity to talk with her about this science unit. We hope you enjoy leaning about this area of study.
Reported by Reece, Molly and Owen