This Week in 4th Grade.....

It should be an exciting week in school!  On Tuesday we will have a school-wide spirit day.  The kids are encouraged to wear black and orange for Halloween. 

If your child is getting his/her picture retaken or if your child wasn't here for our original picture day, retakes will take place on Wednesday, November 1st!



There was a lot of excitement as the kids entered the classrooms each morning last week.  On Friday, our LL Corner store was open for business.  The kids had a chance to count up their LL Bucks and decide if they wanted to spend it on an item in the store or save it for the future.  Gum Day is certainly a reward that many kids are saving for.  

Invention Convention

In an effort to build excitement as students enter the door in the morning, foster creativity and engineering skills and build our cooperative learning abilities, we launched our "Invention Convention" this week!  Students were placed into teams and were provided with a random object that had no apparent use.  As a team, students needed to invent a use for the object and create a poster to market their object to others.  Prior to beginning, teamwork strategies were discussed with an emphasis on solving disagreements and sharing the decision making role.  Each morning this past week students worked on their inventions as part of their morning work.  It was fantastic to see students so excited to enter the classroom in the morning and to see the creativity that was flowing through our rooms!  Below are some pictures of our inventors hard at work.

Reader's Workshop

This week we focused on increasing our passion for reading and building ourselves up to be more successful when reading at home.  We reviewed expectations for reading at home and discussed why we should be reading the same book at school and home.  We also practiced recommending books.  You can see students sharing the books they are excited about with each other in the pictures below.  I also spent a lot of time checking in with students regarding their book choices and whether or not they were enjoying their books this week.  On Friday I asked all students, on a scale of 0 - 5, how much they were enjoying the book they were currently reading.  Nearly all students reported either a 4 or a 5!

As always, please let me know if you are seeing any struggles with book enjoyment or willingness to read and I will be happy to help.

Math Workshop

We finished up Module 1 last week.  On Friday, the kids took the Module 1 Assessment.  I am really proud of the kids for using the Effective Effort strategies of time, focus, and resourcefulness.  We talked a lot about using our resources as a tool to help us to be successful.  We will be taking a look at our assessments this week and using feedback to revise one or more of our answers where needed.  You can expect to see the assessment coming home later this week.  When your child brings home his/her assessment, please sign the page stating that you have received it and send it back to school with your child.

We will be starting our next unit, Module 2 this week.  It is a quick unit on the metric system. 

I hope everyone has a great week!

Jen and Jaime

This Week in 4th Grade....

Hi Families,

I hope everyone enjoyed the beautiful weekend weather.  It was great to speak with so many families last week at conferences. 

Math Workshop

On Friday we spent some time seeing how many multiplication facts that we know and facts that we don't know YET.  The kids worked in pairs to see what facts they were fluent with.  We talked about the importance of being fluent with facts and how it will really help when there are tougher multiplication, division, and fraction problems.  After finding the problems that each student doesn't know YET, we will be able to set goals and see how our math brain grows over time.  Ask your child what facts he/she knows fluently right now.  Students will continue to come home with math fluency packet for homework each week.

Writing Workshop

Last week we really focused on the patterns in an essay.  The kids had a chance to flash draft an essay to get used to the pattern in this writing genre.  We will also learn how to push our thinking in our writing this week.  When we push our thinking we will be able to expand on our ideas.  

Reading At Home

It was helpful for me to speak with families this week at conferences to find out how reading at home is going.  This week during Reader's Workshop we will focus on choosing just right books and recommending books for each other to enjoy.  We will also discuss reading expectations at home and work to ignite some passion around the books we are reading!  It is extremely important that if you see your child resisting their reading expectations at home or not bringing home books that they are enjoying that you let us know.  Thank you so much for your support!

Character Trait Book

We will be wrapping up our character trait book for homework this week.  There may be a couple of evenings this week where students will have less homework from Mrs. Leger as we work here at school to launch a new homework assignment.  We always like to make sure that expectations are clear here at school before sending home a new assignment.

Book Orders

Last call for October book orders!  I will be submitting the order tomorrow night!  Our online class code is H3M9C.

We hope everyone has a great week.  Please let us know if you have any questions.

Jaime and Jen

This Week in 4th Grade....

Hopefully everyone had a great weekend.  As you know this week we have 2 half days this week.  We have parent-teacher conferences on Wednesday and Thursday.  If you haven't signed up for a conference, please do so.  If you are not able to sign up, please email one of us and we will find a time that will work.  

Conference Questionnaire

Last week your child went home with a conference questionnaire. You can also use the attached form below. This will help us to make the best use of our conference time.  Please fill this out and return by Tuesday.  

Conference Questionnaire

Immigration Interview

This week students were able to share their immigration stories with one another.  They enjoyed getting the chance to share where their families had come from and how they arrived here in the United States.  I do think that a lot of students were able to see connections among their stories and helped them to further understand the topic that we are learning here in school during Social Studies.  Several groups were even excited to share with each other where their countries of origin were located on the map as you can see in the photograph below.  Thank you so much for your support with this assignment.

Writing Workshop

During our very short week last week, we took some time to understand our next writing genre.  We will be writing Literary Essays.  The students spent time reading some examples of literary essays and seeing what they could notice.  Taking time to really understand a new genre helps students to be more successful when they go to actually write their own literary essay.  This week students will start to grow ideas about some of the picture books that they have been reading.

Book Orders

Book orders went out this week and are due next Friday.  The class code is H3M9C.  Feel free to order online or by sending in the slip.

We look forward to meeting with many of you during conferences this week.  

Jen and Jaime

This Week in Fourth Grade....

I hope everyone is enjoying the extra long weekend!  Just a reminder students do not have school on Tuesday, October 10th.  

Last week a link was sent out so that parents could sign up for Parent Teacher Conferences.  Conferences will take place next Wednesday, October 18th from 12:30-2:30 and 6:30-8:00 and on Thursday (10/19) morning from 9:00-10:50 and from 12:30-2:45 in the afternoon.  Student DO have school on Thursday, but Mrs. Leger and I will be holding conferences during the morning so that we can accommodate all families.

Math Workshop

We worked on rounding and started a review of the standard algorithm for addition.  In fourth grade, students do need to learn the standard algorithm for both addition and subtraction.  We found out quickly that there were many different ways that students were comfortable with solving addition problems.  As fourth graders we need to find strategies that help us to be accurate and efficient.  We discovered that the standard algorithm does both.  Students will be able to use the other addition strategies to check their work.  

Writing Workshop

We are almost published authors!  The kids worked really hard to finish up their first personal narrative of fourth grade!  Ask your child what he/she learned about paragraphing.  We spent a lot of time focusing on creating paragraphs in our stories.  This makes it easier for the reader to follow along.  This week the kids will share their hard work with their classmates!  Feel free to have your child show you his/her story on Google Docs.

Characters!

This week we have jumped into thinking more deeply about the characters in our books.  We have been learning vocabulary that will help us describe their traits and strategies for growing ideas about characters.  We have learned that we can learn a lot about characters by looking closely at what they say, think and do.  After collecting these details we can grow ideas about what is going on within a character by asking ourselves WHY?  Why do they say the things they do?  Why are they acting a certain way?  Why are the thinking the thoughts they are?

Our classes have also done a lot of cooperative learning this week.  They have been pushing each others' thinking and have engaged in some really interesting conversations!  Below are some pictures of everyone hard at work.

Reading at Home

Student are still expected to read at home every single day for 20 minutes.  I have begun to encourage students to bring the same book back and forth to school every day.  Whatever they are reading at home, they should also be reading at school.  This helps students to keep moving through books and to be able to focus on only one book instead of two.

Over the next couple of weeks I will be checking in with families to find out how the reading is going and how I can continue to support you.  If you need any support in the meantime, please let me know!

We are looking forward to seeing the kids on Wednesday!  Have a great week!

Jaime and Jen

Coming Up This Week....

We hope everyone enjoyed the weekend. It is crazy to think that the kids are officially ONE month into fourth grade. It has been a great month of getting to know each other, learning the routines, and understanding the expectations of fourth grade! We are looking forward to a great October!

Writing Workshop

In writing workshop last week, the kids worked on creating a lead or beginning for their personal narrative story.  We looked at different leads from published authors and started to think about how we could “borrow” ideas and use them in our own stories.

This week we will be wrapping up our personal narrative writing.  The authors will be thinking about how to add in paragraphing so that their reader can understand what is going on.  This is part of the editing process.  

Math Workshop

We started the week off with rounding.  The kids were introduced to a vertical number line to help us visualize where numbers fall on a number line before rounding them.  This takes a lot of practice, but many of the students demonstrated a growth mindset during math last week.  We prepared ourselves before starting the rounding lessons with some positive self talk and reminders that at first some things are hard to do, but with practice we can ALL be successful.

Reader's Workshop

This week in reader's workshop we continued to envision.  Students honed their ability to make a movie in their minds where they imagined what the characters were saying, doing, thinking and feeling.  This week coming up we will begin to use the details we have been envisioning to help us think more deeply about characters.  We will push ourselves to notice patterns in characters and to think about what this makes us think about these characters.  We will think about their traits and motivations.

To support this work, we are working to build students' vocabulary around character traits.  Last week in school we launched a character trait book.  Each day a new trait was introduced and students were asked to think of someone from their own lives, from books, television shows, or movies that embodied that trait.  They then wrote 2 pieces of evidence to prove why their character illustrates that trait.  

This week we will continue to introduce one new character trait each day.  Students will then choose their person and write the evidence at home each night for homework.  Students will also be asked to illustrate the character in a way that shows them doing the trait.  They can do this by hand or by printings pictures off-line or magazine cut outs and gluing these into the book.

Since this is a new undertaking for students this week, they will not be asked to write one though down on their note sheets after reading this week.  We will take a break from that this week.  They are still expected to read each night for 20 minutes however!

Immigration Interview

This week Mrs. Lewis' homeroom will have the immigration interview assignment taken home.  Due to an unexpected meeting last week, the interview was not assigned to this homework.  Mrs. Leger's homeroom did the assignment this past week and it was due on Friday, 9/29.  If your child forgot to turn it in, please remind them to do so on Monday!

We hope everyone has a great first week of October!

Jaime and Jen