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.