This Week in Fourth Grade...

It was great to meet with so many parents last week during conferences!  Thank you for letting us be a partner in your child's education.

Writing Workshop

We continued to practice answering questions using key words in our answer.  The kids were able to "interview" a character in one of the picture books that they have been reading for the Battle of the Books during Reader's Workshop.  This allowed them to practice using the key words in the question and putting them into the answer.  

This week we will be focusing in on evidence.  Evidence is something in a text (or picture) that you can touch.  Finding specific evidence will help the kids as they begin to write answers to open response questions and need to back up their answers with evidence.  

Math Workshop

Last week each team was introduced to a problem solving template that we will use throughout the school year.  Becoming familiar with this template will help students become more effective problem solvers.  

One of the parts of the template that we are really focusing on is what they are envisioning, or the picture that they are seeing in their mind as they read the problem.  Although they have been practicing this strategy since the start of the school year in reading, we are trying to teach them the importance of also applying this skill to math.  We will continue to work on this throughout the week!

Reader's Workshop


This week we learned that we can learn more about a character by looking at what that character says, thinks or does.  We put this into practice while reading The Stranger by Chris Van Allsburg.  At the end of the week, we had a class discussion with regards to who we thought the Stranger was.  There were many different inferences with lots of evidence to support these inferences!  We practiced our discussion skills and reinforced the idea that all of our thinking in reading should be supported with evidence.  You would have been so proud to hear the academic language your students were using during this discussion!  Below are some pictures of students debating and deep in thought along with some of the resources we used.

Effective Effort

We spoke with a lot of parents at conferences this past week regarding "Effective Effort."  Simply put, we have been teaching your children what hard work actually looks like and the strategies used to make your hard work turn into success.  We thought you would like to see the language that we have been using and the strategies that we are teaching.  Thus far, we have taught time, use of feedback, resourcefulness, and focus.  Once taught, we identify students who are employing the strategies and give them a "shout out."  Any way that you can use this language at home would also help your child to own these strategies.