We worked with our K-buddies to celebrate the 100th day of schools. Students used toothpicks and marshmallows to create a structure of 100!
Dear Fourth Grade Families,
This week during morning meeting we did a “snowball greeting” where students randomly selected a classmate to greet. They picked another “snowball” with a student’s name and were tasked to watch their classmate in order to give them a compliment the next morning. It was great to hear how observant the students are and all of the amazing things they are doing throughout their day. In reading this week, we began our interpretation unit. Students are working on the difficult task of making an interpretation by understanding what the author is really trying to say or teach. This is challenging work for fourth graders. They have done a great job locating where the author is leaving clues about the theme. We have discussed how the characters, setting, plot, mood, recurring images or objects help us to find clues in our stories. The next step is for students to be able to take those clues and connect them to make an interpretation. We will continue to work on developing our interpretations as the unit progresses. In math, we are working on comparing and ordering fractions with unlike denominators. Students were introduced to four strategies to do this work.
Have a great weekend. Dear Fourth Grade Families,
I am impressed every day with your children. They work so hard and push themselves to learn new things. I am very proud of all of the hard work during these last two weeks. We finished our historical fiction reading unit. This has been a great unit and the students are very excited about what they are reading and learning. Students have been working on completing written responses. We have talked about how written responses must include our thinking and specific evidence from the text. I introduced a new acronym, R.A.C.E., to help students with their written responses. R- Restate the question A-Answer the question C- Cite multiple sources of evidence E- Explain the evidence (This shows…) In math we worked very hard to prepare for our winter benchmark. I am extremely impressed with the effort and determination in which the students tackled this task. It is great to see that many of the students are able to hold onto their learning over time. It also gives me an opportunity to see where more instruction is needed. I hope to send home the scores next week, after everyone has finished taking the assessment. We also have started practicing for the SBAC. Students will be taking the SBAC in May. We are using Interim Assessment Blocks that match our current units of study in math. The IAB’s are short, only 16 questions and give students the opportunity to practice taking an online assessment. One of the biggest challenges for students is to use paper and pencil to show their work while using the online format. This is a work in progress! Have a great long weekend! We are using TenMarks to build our math skills on the IPads! Students can watch videos and get hints to help them solve the problems.
Dear Fourth Grade Families,
I am so proud of all of the hard work of our fourth graders to prepare for their first concert. They did a great job. They were very excited to share their new skills with everyone. In reading this week we have been developing our critical thinking skills to make interpretations. We have been focusing on analyzing the perspective of our characters. We looked for how a character feels about an event or another character and used specific evidence from the text. Students were asked to analyze the character’s perspective by looking at how the historical time period has impacted the character’s life and their role in the story. We also have been looking to determine the themes in our stories. Students looked for important passages in the book and asked themselves how it connects to other parts of the book and what this is really about. In math we have been working on strategies for multi-digit division. We will be having our unit 3 post-assessment next Thursday, December 15th. Please encourage your child to practice these skills on the weekend math homework. If your child is still having trouble, please check my blog for examples and let me know. Have a great weekend! Heather Dear Fourth Grade Families,
I hope you had a great time with your family and your amazing children. We spent the long weekend in the Berkshires with our family. We took KJ hiking and he surprised us all at how much he could do! He hiked almost 2 miles, pretty impressive for a three year old! This week in reading we started our historical fiction reading unit. This is my favorite reading unit of the year! Historical fiction is a fascinating genre where you get to learn about historical times and read a great story with heroic characters. Students will be reading about a specific time period in history with the support of a book club. Students have a reading calendar for their assigned book that they are expected to keep up with. They will have time in school to read, but if they don’t finish their reading they should be finishing their assignment at home. The historical fiction reading can count towards their homework minutes. In math we have been working on different strategies to solve multi-digit multiplication problems. Students learned how to solve 2 x 2 multiplication problems using a rectangle model. Students are taking home a practice sheet to keep working on these skills over the weekend. While the homework is optional, I am encouraging all students to complete the assignment. Have a great weekend. |
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December 2018
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