Weekly Update

Reader’s Workshop:

This week we have continued our interactive read-aloud Mr. Popper’s Penguins. We focused in on identifying character traits for Mr. Popper and finding specific evidence from the text that support our ideas about who Mr. Popper is as a person. Students continued to ask “talk worthy” questions to improve understanding of the text. 

Writer’s Workshop:

Now that students have drafted their narrative small moments, we have moved onto the revising stage of the writing process. During the revising stage students will learn strategies for making their writing better by changing or adding to different parts of their story. This week students’ focused in on the heart of their story (the turning point) and used several strategies, such as adding internal thinking, to elaborate this part of they story, as we have determined it is the most important part of the story. 

Math:

We have almost completed Topic 1. Your child has a Topic 1 Assessment on Wednesday 10/18. A Study guide went home on Wednesday of this week. This week we looked at how multiplication and division are related, and strategies for finding quotients. We also talked about special quotients when dividing my 0 and 1. 

Social Studies:

We are almost at the end of our unit on Maps and Globes. Students are continuing to look at different map features and how to use these features to interpret a map. 

Science:

This Tuesday students excitedly participated in their Puff Mobile race, the culminating activity for our Puff Mobile project. Students reflected on the Engineering Design Process used to build their Puff Mobile. We also reflected on the teamwork, perseverance, and collaboration it took for groups to be successful. 

We also continued to learn about weather in science this week. We made observations of our terrariums that have been sitting on the window sill of our classrooms. Students noticed that they were able to observe the water cycle right in their terrarium! We read non-fiction texts about wind and weather tools to help us in PBL this week. In PBL students continued to design their weather stations. 

Up Coming Dates:

Topic 1 Math Assessment - Wednesday 10/18

Maps and Globes Assessment- Tuesday 10/24 (study guide will come home on Tuesday)

Party in a Bag- Tuesday 10/31 (orange paper went home)

No School Professional Development Day- Tuesday 11/7

No School Veterans Day- Friday 11/10

This week's Disco Ball winners!

RM 21 Top Boy Racer

Grade 4 Top Racers

Students cheer on their team!

Grade 4 Top Boy Racers

Grade 4 Final Top Racer!

RM 21 Top Girl Racer

Grade 4 Top Girl Racers

Room 21 Update

Today we celebrated world SMILE :) day by wearing Smile stickers and wearing Ladybug Kindness Medals created after our author SKYPE last week. 

This week's winners of the "disco ball" during dance party Friday!

Math: We are well into Topic 1 Multiplication and Division: Meanings and Facts. This week we focused our lessons on the meaning of multiplication and strategies for finding the product of different facts efficiently. Students used skip counting to find multiples of 2 and 5. Also, students analyzed the patterns in the multiples of 9 and learned a quick trick using their fingers for 9's facts. Yesterday students used the strategy "break apart" to quickly find products of 3,4,6,7,and 8's facts. 

Reader's Workshop:

We had a special packaged delivered during our 4th grade community meeting on Monday! 

In this package students found a penguin and our first interactive read aloud of the year: Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard and Florence Atwater. This week students learned routines for interactive read alouds during reader's workshop. While reading this book together as a class, students will practice tracking narrative elements and asking "talk worthy questions".

Writer's Workshop: This week students drafted their narrative stories after completing detailed planning using story mountain maps and planning boxes. In planning boxes students carefully planned where they would add action, thought shots, vivid description, feelings, and dialogue to help tell the story step-by-step. 

Science: Students continued to work in collaborative groups on Puff Mobiles. We also started our first science unit on weather. We began by discussing the water cycle, and participating in different observations of the water cycle in action.

Social Studies: Students continued to learn about maps and globes by focusing in on intermediate directions on the compass rose and practicing using the map scale to determine the distance between two places on a map. 

SKYPE:

Students participated in their first SKYPE visit of the school year. This first SKYPE was a "chat" with author of The LadyBug Race,  Amy Nielander. She shared with us the steps she took in writing the wordless pictures book, including sharing her inspiration for the book. Students were able to take this presentation and relate it to their own work in writing personal narrative stories this month.