This Week in 4th Grade....

I hope everyone was able to enjoy the Thanksgiving break.  Hopefully you and your child had a chance to relax and have fun with friends and family. 

Writing Workshop

The kids have a had a chance to write a literary essay with a partner over the past few weeks.  Partners have worked together to plan out the essay and write the essay on Google Docs.  This week the students will work on a mid-unit assessment to see what each individual student has an understanding of and what each child needs to continue to work on.  This will help us to work with the students later this week to create goals for the remainder of the Literary Essay unit.

Math Workshop

Last week we started to learn about the Area Model for Multiplication.  In fourth grade, students do not need to learn the standard algorithm for multiplying larger numbers.  If the students have this as a tool in their back pocket they will be encouraged to use it for checking their work, however, our focus in school with be on learning and practicing the Area Model and/or Partial Product.  This way of learning multiplication helps to build a foundation of helping students truly understand how multiplication works.

                  For example:  13 x 7

Students work to find the area of each smaller rectangle and then add the products together.  

We are finishing up with our Multiplication Fluency packets.  We will be working on the 11's this week and then the 12's next week.  In school, we will continue to work on using strategies for determining the answer to a multiplication problem.  Skip counting is one of the strategies that we will encourage students to use when they are stuck on a multiplication fact.  The strategy sheet shown here is another way that students will be taught to think about tricky facts.  Multiplication fact errors is where most students fall apart when solving larger multiplication problems. 

Science Workshop

Students had the exciting opportunity to participate in a hands-on science workshop offered by the Action Child's Science Museum at school this past week.  They were challenged to develop an insulation capsule to protect a "NASA device" called "CAT."  This device was to be sent to a new planet that had been discovered but was very sensitive to temperature so it needed to be insulated.  Prior to this challenge, students explored various types of insulation and attempted to identify the best material to insulate with.  It was wonderful to see everyone working together with the engineering process.

Kindness Month

We wrapped up Kindness Month with a "Things We Like About ________" activity.  Each student had their own sheet of paper and all students took turns writing what they liked about each other on the sheets.  It was heartwarming to see the kind and thoughtful notes that students wrote to each other.  Following this activity, students took the time to think about someone in their lives that they are especially thankful for.  They wrote thank you cards to these people.

With that being said, we both wanted to share how thankful we have been this year for such a wonderful group of students and families to work with.  We appreciate all of your support and enthusiasm you have shared with us this year!

Jaime and Jen