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