This Week in Fourth Grade...

I hope everyone had a great weekend!  I can't believe we are heading into Thanksgiving week!  Tomorrow we will have an in school "field trip."  The Acton Discovery Museum will be coming to school to do an hour long hands-on presentation for both homerooms. 

                        

Science

Both classes had the chance to do some hands-on experimenting in science last week.  It is always  so fun to see what creative ideas the kids have to help them solve a problem.

Reader's Workshop

On Friday we extended our learning about characters by learning how we can think about character change in books.  We learned that a character's traits, feelings, actions or thoughts may change in a story and that we can use a story arch to track these changes.  Following our new learning, students were partnered up and began to practice this type of thinking and began to create their own character change archs.  We will continue this learning before and after Thanksgiving.  Below is an example of a character arch and a photo of students working together to create their own.

Kindness Week

Kindness Week continued and is turning into Kindness Month!  This week students learned about bystanders and what they can do when they find themselves as a bystander in a situation.  Students worked with partners and created comics where they needed to brainstorm what they could say if they were to be a bystander at some point.  Next week we will extend our kindness to others by thinking about what we like about each other.  We also have a small thankfulness project planned in honor of the upcoming holiday!

Math Workshop

To go along with our learning about area and perimeter, the kids were able to create a Dream House.  After creating the floor plan, partners were able to work together to determine the area and perimeter of some of the objects in each room as well as the area left over in some of the different rooms they created. This led to great conversations and some deeper learning around area and perimeter!

Brain Breaks

Each day we stop for a Brain Break and Bathroom Break....one in the morning and one in the afternoon. The kids work so hard during each subject that they need a chance to give their brains a break for a few minutes so that they are ready to learn again!

There are many dance and movement videos that the kids can follow along with during each Brain Break.  Last week, after trying the Electric Slide and Macarena, some of the kids put in a special request for the Cha Cha Slide.  Here is a peek into one of our Brain Breaks!  Enjoy!

Brain Break in Action

Just a reminder that Wednesday is a 1/2 day!  We hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! 

Jen and Jaime