This Week in 4th Grade....

Kindness Week

This past week we launched Kindness Week in our community.  We began by asking students to share memories of others being unkind to them and how it made them feel.  I think that students were surprised to see how many of their classmates have been affected by unkind words from others.  I think more jarring to all, was how the careless words of one could have such an effect on the feelings of others.  We also spent time this week discussing what someone can say when another is being unkind.  Many times, students are so taken aback when another is being mean that they can think of nothing else but to do it back or to take the mean comments as truth.  We are hoping to teach other ways for students to react to these situations.

Next week we will discuss what bystanders can do when they encounter these situations and spend some time thinking about what we like about the members of our community.  Then we will move towards performing random acts of kindness.

Reader's Workshop

It was wonderful to see nearly all students turn in their reading response homework on time this past week.  Thank you so much for the support you gave to students this week.  They will have the same assignment this week and in school we will look at how they can lift the level of that work.  Please let me know if your child is struggling with this assignment so that I can support them here in school.

Book Orders

Book orders were sent home last week and are due on Wednesday.  To order online our classroom code is H3M9C.  Books make fantastic Christmas gifts as the cold winter months approach.  If you are planning on giving your child the books you order as a gift, please let me know and I will leave them in the office for you to pick up so that your young reader has no idea!

Math Workshop

We finished Module 2 on the metric system last week.  We were able to use the data we collected from the Metric Olympics to place our results on a number line to compare distances.  

Later in the week we started Module 3.  This unit includes area, perimeter, multiplication, and division.  We started the module with area and perimeter.  The kids were able to take their previous learning from 3rd grade to help them with what they need to learn in fourth grade around area and perimeter.  This week we will start a real world application project for finding area and perimeter.  Be sure to ask your child what he/she is designing!

We hope everyone has a great week!

Jaime and Jen