This Week in Fourth Grade....

Math Workshop

We are moving onto Geometry this week in math.  During this unit the kids will learn about the different types of lines, angles, and how to measure angles.  The kids will get to practice with a variety of projects.

Last week we finished up our work with division.  We will continue to revisit division as we go through the rest of the year.

Math Homework

This week's math homework is a continuation of last week's homework.  Students needed to answer the Which One Doesn't Belong problem last week and then lift the level of their answer based on my feedback.  This week they will need to reply to 2 classmates on Flipgrid (or paper if there isn't internet access.)  

This is due on Wednesday!

Writing Workshop

Last week the kids worked on fixing run on sentences in their first fiction story.  This week they will complete a mid-unit check in.  They will be writing a second story independently that we will be able to use to assess and guide our lessons for the next few weeks.  

Science

Both teams have been learning about Light in science.  The kids started the Light Unit with a question to think about.  They needed to determine what materials would make a good shadow puppet.  Through some experiments the kids learned about transparent, translucent, and opaque materials.  Based on the results of their experiments they needed to decide what materials would work best to make a shadow puppet.  Soon the kids will be putting on their shadow puppet theaters.  There have been many creative ideas!



Reader's Workshop

Students continue learning about how to infer theme this past week.  We have wrapped up watching short films as a way to encounter different themes and now have a library of themes on our bulletin board out in the hallway.  Students have also been participating in mini book clubs where they read picture books independently, employed different strategies to infer the theme, and took notes throughout the text to help them infer the theme.  Students then met and discussed their thinking with an emphasis on providing evidence to support their thinking.  This week we will continue with book clubs and work on writing about theme.  Below are pictures of students discussing the themes of their books during book club meetings and our bulletin board out in the hallway.

Social Studies


We have wrapped up our unit on immigration.  Students wrote a diary entry from the perspective of an immigrant traveling to Ellis Island.  We will "antique" these entries and hang them in the hallway this week.  Next students will begin learning about vocabulary that will support our upcoming learning about the regions of the United States.  During this unit students will be able to integrate their learning about reading non-fiction that will be taking place during Reader's Workshop in the near future.  They will also integrate technology in numerous project-based learning activities that will help them learn how to become better researchers.

This Week in Fourth Grade

Writing Workshop

We wrapped up our rough drafts last week.  The kids spent the week writing the scenes of their story.  They practiced adding in details to describe how a character in the story was feeling.  This week we will work on editing our story.  Our focus will be fixing run on sentences.


Math Workshop

The kids are becoming proficient in division.  They continued to practice solving division problems last week.  They were working through a movie project.  In the project the students were solving problems to help them determine the number and price of items to open up their very own movie theater!




Reader's Workshop


Students spent the week with their noses in short texts as they practiced different strategies for inferring theme.  We are also still watching short films during morning meeting as another way to be exposed to and practice inferring themes.  We will wrap up theme this week with mini book clubs and lessons on how to write about theme with evidence.  

Reading At Home


Students are still expected to read at home every day for 20 minutes.  Please let us know if your child needs any support with this.

This Week in Fourth Grade....

Book Orders!

Book orders were sent home last week!  They are due on Thursday.  Our class code is H3M9C if you wish to order online.  Winter is a great time of year to curl up with a good book!


Math Workshop

Last week we started our unit on division.  We started by using place value charts and manipulatives so that we could actually divide and move the manipulatives as we did so.  Division can be a tricky part of math for fourth graders so being able to "move" what we are dividing and then discuss what we are doing seems to help it make more sense for kids.  We have been solving word problems from the start of division so that kids have a real word understanding for dividing.  We will continue to work on division this week as well.  The kids will be starting a project this week in math!  

Writer's Workshop

After choosing a story idea around the theme of bravery, the kids started writing the different scenes or parts of their story.  We focused on writing step by step, which means to really stretch out or slow down the story.  This helps to add in more specific details.  We will continue to work in small groups this week to help kids get what they need as a writer.


Theme

This week during Reader's Workshop, students began learning about inferring theme in books.  The concept was introduced using short animated films such as the ones produced by Pixar.  They learned that the theme is the lesson or message in a text and that it will cover most of what happens in the beginning, middle, and end of a story.  We will dive into many different picture books to practice inferring the different themes in texts this week.  To build our own library of common themes that we can refer to when reading, we will also continue to watch short animated films during morning meeting.

This Week In Fourth Grade

Welcome Back!

This week we got back into the swing of things by thinking about how we could make our community an even better place to learn to 2019.  Students brainstormed ideas and shared out.  They were asked repeatedly over the three days to reflect on how they were doing and what they still wanted to work on.  We will continue these conversations next week.


Reading Without Walls

On Friday, I explained a new reading challenge that we are starting at school.  It is called "Reading Without Walls" and comes from Gene Luyen Yang, one of the National Ambassadors of Young Children's Literature.  His challenge is aimed at having students expand their horizons by completing three challenges:

We launched this challenge in class by discussing how books can teach you about people and cultures that you may not be aware of or fully understand.  It can help us understand the differences among us and learn to empathize and respect these differences among us.  We also discussed several books that we have already read this year that are wonderful examples of this.  There is a display in the hallway that has a number of books right now that qualify for the first challenge.  This display will be updated with the second and third challenges as we go.  

Math


We did a review of multiplication last week.  Tomorrow we will do a quick "check in" on what the kids have an understanding of.  Then we will be moving on to division.  Just like multiplication, fourth graders do not need to know the standard algorithm (or the way we learned) for division.  We will be using manipulatives to "see" what it means to divide.  

Math Homework

There will be 2 things due for math homework this week.  The topic of "Which one doesn't belong" will be the same as least week.  Students will be getting the directions that include a checklist to keep them organized tomorrow.  We will discuss the homework in class as well.  If students have access to a computer, they will need to create a Flipgrid for their answer to which one doesn't belong.  This is due on Wednesday.  Then they will need to respond to 2 classmates Flipgrids by Friday.   I am attaching a copy of the homework below so you know what to look for in your child's homework folder.

Flipgrid- Which One Doesn't Belong Homework

Science

We started a new unit on Light in science.  The students are trying to help figure out what materials would be effective for making a shadow puppet.  We will be learning about transparent, translucent, and opaque materials.  Then students will determine what they think would make the best material for their own shadow puppet.

This Week in Fourth Grade

Happy Holidays!

We hope that everyone had a great holiday full of family, food, and fun and a healthy and happy New Year!


Peace

To celebrate the holidays in our community, we discussed that one thing we can all wish for around the holidays is peace.  We also talked about how in order to create peace we all need to work together.  To create the doves we each had a different color paint and put fingerprints on each dove until they were filled.  The colors combine to create one work of art.  

Mystery Readers

Thank you so much to all of the mystery readers that joined us today!  The students thoroughly enjoyed each story and guest that joined us.

Simile Snowball Fight

Students learned about similes this week and practiced writing their own.  We then took these similes and use them to have a....snowball fight!  After some fun, students would take a simile snowball and share what had been written.  Students then wrote new similes and our snowball fighting commenced once more.  We will continue to learn about how we can use similes to add craft to our own writing after vacation.