This Week in Fourth Grade

 The Champions!

We wrapped up our Battle of the Books competition this week during Reader's Workshop.  During this past trimester, students read 16 different picture books that supported the comprehension strategies being taught.  The books then faced-off in a March Madness-style bracket to see which book was the favorite.  The winners from each academic team then faced off against one another to find the champion of our entire community.  And the winner was.......



Below are some pictures of the two brackets.

Character Change

Next week we will begin to think about how characters change in stories during Reader's Workshop.  We will first do this by using our whole class read aloud, Tiger Rising and then we will move on to short text and then chapter books.  If you are reading with your child in the weeks to come you can support this new learning by asking about how the character is changing in the book.  Below is some of the language that we sometimes use when we talk about character change.

In the beginning the character was…..

But then….(turning point)

So the character realizes…..

By the end….(how is the character different from the beginning?)

Math Workshop

Last week we started our work with multiplying by multiples of ten. 

For example:

3 x 10=30

3 x 100=300

3 x 1000=3000

We practiced using place value charts to start and once students started to see patterns in their answers some moved on to using the pattern to solve problems.

This week we will start solving two digit by one digit multiplication problems. In fourth grade we are not using the standard algorithm (the way we learned as kids). Our focus in fourth grade is to have a deep understanding of the WHY behind multiplication. Students will get to manipulatives to help them start to make sense of this type of multiplication this week. They will also be using their learning from last week and building upon it.

This Week in Fourth Grade

The Award Goes To....

Last week many of the kids finished writing their award speech for one of the Battle Book Characters.  Students who were able to follow the directions and record a speech that was clear, on topic, and the speech was read according to the Open Response expectations, had their Award Ceremony Flipgrid approved for viewing!  Below is the link to the Award Ceremony.  Enjoy!

Award Ceremony Flipgrids

Math Homework

This week your child will receive math homework along with reading for 20 minutes each night.  The packet will go along with the multiplication fact family that your child is working on in class based on a multiplication assessment that was given.  For example, if your child is working on the 8's fact family, he/she will complete the work inside the packet using the multiplication facts of 8.  

This packet will be due on Friday.  Please sign/initial the bottom of each page to state that your child completed the work to the best of his/her ability.

This Week in Fourth Grade

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year, we are thankful for all of you!  We can't thank everyone enough for letting us be a partner in your child's education.  We appreciate your communication, support and love that you give us every day!


Homework This Week and In The Near Future

This week, students' only homework will be to read for 20 minutes every day.  We have wrapped up our Character Trait book and the Tracking Our Reading book.  After Thanksgiving, Mrs. Lewis will be launching math homework.


Wish List

Our community has received several wonderful donations of books over the last two weeks!  Thank you to everyone who has donated.  Almost all of the books have already made it into voracious readers' hands.  If you are still thinking of donating, here is the link:     http://a.co/3nRPJtr



And the Award Goes To....

Our judges have been hard at work deciding on the characters that deserve an award.  They have been working hard getting their speeches ready.  We are hoping to have them up on Flipgrid by Tuesday afternoon!  

Just a reminder that we do not have school on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday this week!  Enjoy the break!

Jen and Jaime

This Week in Fourth Grade...

Don't Forget!

There is a half day on Wednesday!

Reader's Workshop
This week in Reader's Workshop, students continued to read The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo.  We are reading this out loud as a class and using it to practice the reading strategies we are learning about thinking deeply about a character.  This week we practiced inferring a character's traits and considered a character's motivations for his/her actions.  Students also practiced writing analytically about characters with partners.  In addition, students also learned that there are certain details in a text that often lend themselves to inferring more deeply.  We learned about these types of details and noticed quite a few of them while reading The Tiger Rising, this resulted in some fantastic conversations this week!  Below you will see partnerships working together in various reader's workshop activities this week.

Books!
Thank you so much for considering our Amazon Book Wish List that I sent out earlier this week.  I have already gotten two books from some very generous families.  Students will be very excited to read these.  If you missed the link, here it is.

http://a.co/dmJ9FcT


Book Order
The book order for November was sent out last week and is due on Wednesday.  If you have a book that you are ordering for your child for Christmas, please let me know and I would be happy to put it (unbeknownst to your child) in the office for you to pick up.  To order online, our classroom code is H3M9C.

Math Workshop

We started the week off by participating in the Metric Olympics.  The kids participated in 3 very difficult events...the Left Handed Sponge Squeeze, the Straw Javelin, and the Right Handed Rock Grab!  They were athletes and judges all at the same time.  They put their knowledge of metric measuring to good use. After the Olympic games, they were then able to take the results and complete some activities with them. 

The Left-Handed Sponge Squeeze

Straw Javelin Throw

Right Handed Rock Grab

Official Judges (of Character)!

As we begin to wrap up our literary essay unit in writing, the kids officially became Judges (of Character!).  They have an exciting job ahead of them.  They will be using the Battle Books that they have read deeply in Reader's Workshop to determine a character that is deserving of an award.  They will be able to give out one of two awards to ONE of the most deserving characters.  Some will hand out the Two Thumbs Up Award for a character that possesses a very positive trait that others should look up to, while others will hand out the Bad Apple Award to the character that others need to be "warned" about.

Be on the lookout for the Award Ceremony coming soon to a Flipgrid near you!  

Official Judge!

Official Judge!

Taking a closer look
at characters.

Discussing characters

Tic, Tac, Toe

Who said Tic-Tac-Toe is only for paper?!?!  We had the chance to play an oversized game of Tic-Tac-Toe during community meeting this week.  We had a chance to work together as a team and work together to devise a winning strategy!

This Week in Fourth Grade

STEM

On Wednesday, we celebrated Fall by giving students a stem challenge.  They needed to create a platform that would hold up a dictionary and pumpkin 12 inches off of the ground by only using 12 inches of masking tape and 4 pieces of construction paper.  Students learned to work as a team as they rose to the challenge!  Below are some pictures of the activity.

Reader's Workshop

This week, we continued to think about characters more deeply by taking what they having been saying, thinking and doing in a text and categorizing this information.  Once students had a category of evidence, they decided on a character trait that would best describe these actions.  Next week we will consider a character's motivations behind their actions and look at how they react to obstacles.  Woven into all of this reading and thinking are lessons on how to write about our thinking around reading.  Students are becoming much more analytical as the year has gone on!  Below are some pictures of their thinking:

Math Workshop

We started our unit on Metric Measurements last week.  The kids started to see the patterns when converting between kilograms and grams, kilometers and meters, and liters and milliliters.  Understanding the patterns helped the kids to be able to solve problems and talk about their thinking around this type of problem.  

This week we will hold the Metric Olympic Games.  Students will be able to apply their learning from last week to help sort through the results of the Olympic Games.

Science

As we continue through our sound unit in science, the kids were very excited to try out some experiments using a tuning fork.  The question that they were answering was around the evidence that they have to prove the tuning fork was vibrating.  

Teamwork

As the year continues, the relationships among the class have continued to strengthen.  On Thursday, we spent morning meeting in the gym playing a game that required students to work as a team in order to be successful.  They learned about the value of communication all the while getting some valuable exercise before starting their day.