Weekly Update

Reader's Workshop: Students are doing a great job with reader's workshop routines. Our mini lessons this week focused on characters. We discussed the character Camilla in A Bad Case of the Stripes by David Shannon this to help us learn about characters. First we talked about her feelings throughout the book and then we focused on her actions, words, and feelings to help us determine who she is as a person (character traits). Students worked on providing evidence for traits they felt fit her character. 

Writer's Workshop: This week students focused on the planning stage. First students story told like Len Cabral by telling a story step-by-step. We tried telling the story of last week's fire drill together as a class first. Then students developed timelines for many of their story ideas. Adding planning boxes to their timelines to plan out when they would add dialogue, action, thoughts, feelings, and sensory details. We are all ready to begin drafting next week. 

STEM/ Science/ Creative Arts Friday Project

This Monday our Engineers in Residence visited students. These engineers taught students about what engineers do and how the engineering design process works. Students were introduced to their first project this week: Puffmobiles. Students worked on designing their Puffmobiles while meeting all of the criteria. We are having many discussions about working well together in a group. Today students began the building stage of the engineering process.

Math: We are on to Topic 4 in math. Students are reviewing how to estimate, add, and subtract sums and differences with regrouping. We will continue this topic next week.

Weekly Update

We had a busy first full week of school!


Writer's Workshop

We officially began writer's workshop this week with a special guest. Len Cabral came and share stories with us as we kicked out our year of writing. Our first lesson in writer's workshop this week focused on generating narrative story ideas. Students thought of strong emotions like guilt and excitement to help generate a large list of ideas. We also talked about how important people, places, and things can be a sources for our story ideas as well. Some of our next lessons focused on making sure our ideas are "seed" ideas not "watermelon" ideas so that we can zoom in on them with detail and tell the story step-by-step (just like Len Cabral did).

In Reader's Workshop students learned how to use their writing journals to record their thinking about their reading through letter writing. We also talked about a strategy good readers use called questioning. Students practiced asking "thin" and "thick" questions in the book Stranger  by Chris Van Allsburg and in their own reading books. 

On Creative Arts Friday students engaged in an activity to practice working in groups. Students developed a list of important things to remember from last weeks challenge to use in future projects.

Math: We finished our first unit on place value. Assessment will be coming home soon.

Homework Help Rounding Video

https://learnzillion.com/lesson_plans/6255

Weekly Update

Last Friday our class ended the week with a closing meeting in which students reflect on their learning for the week and well as share their hopes for the coming weeks. Below are students reflections from last week. 

This week we continued to get to know one another. Please take a look at our Grade 4 Community Meetings and Weekly Mantra on the 4th Grade News Blog at  http://kennedyfourth.blogspot.com/. 

Math: This week we began our first math unit on place value. Students have been working hard his week to practice math routines as well as develop their place value skills. Some of this skills in this unit include writing and reading whole numbers to the one hundred thousand place, rounding whole numbers, comparing numbers, and explaining relationships in place value. Your child will have their first math quiz on Wednesday 9/14. They received a purple study guide today about how they can prepare. We will also include a review day each unit to help review skills learned throughout the topic. 

Reader's Workshop: Students learned the rules and routines of Reader's Workshop. They participated in "housekeeping" by choosing books from our classroom library and creating a book box to keep their reading materials. Students also began tracking their reading progress in their reading log in order collect data about themselves as a reader. Students also practiced "reading zone", in which students spent time interdependently reading each day during Reader’s Workshop. Finally, students practiced choosing "just right" books from our library. 

Writer's Workshop: Students began working on developing their hopes and dreams for this school year. To begin their thinking students were asked to create map of their 3rd grade classroom. Students added symbols to their maps showing the things they enjoyed from last year as well as things that were hard and something they want to improve on. Then students worked to write out a draft of their hopes and dreams for this school year. Today students published their work to be displayed. 

Other: Students learned all about Morning Meeting these past two weeks. Morning Meeting is a time that we all get together as a class before we begin our day. We begin every meeting by greeting each other, then there is an activity in which students can share, followed by a group activity. 

Today students participated in their first Creative Arts Friday. In room 21 students learned about working in a team to complete a task. As an introduction to cooperative learning, students were presented with the task of building a structure out of spaghetti, tape, string, and a marshmallow. The structure is measured from the table top to the top of the marshmallow. After working in groups to complete a structure students reflected on what went well in their group and what didn't go well. These reflections will be something that students look back to often when working on team projects during future Creative Arts Fridays.