Our first 5-day week of the year was full of exciting learning!

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. 

Special Visit:
Mr. Radcliffe, a published author, visited our classroom on Tuesday to help us to see ourselves as writers! He talked about his experience publishing his books and how he develop the ideas for his stories through everyday experiences. He helped students to think outside the box as we brainstormed some exciting fiction story ideas. Mr. Radcliffe will be making an appearance at Cumbercon, a comic book festival at Cumberland Public Library (Cumberland, RI) this weekend.

Reader's Workshop: 
Over the past two weeks we continued our launching unit in Reader's Workshop by practicing strategies good readers use and discussing narrative elements. Students worked on inferring and asking questions as we read aloud two more books by Chris Van Allsburg. 

 

We also took a deeper look at plot, by using Story Mountains to track the events in the story "Dog Breath" by Dav Pilkey. In collaborative groups students determined which event was the "turning point" of the story.

Another minilesson 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. 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. We also used this book to think about the author’s message or theme. Students did a great job thinking about the lesson David Shannon wanted us to learn as readers.

Writer's Workshop: This week students learned strategies for generating small moment story ideas. Students explored strong emotions such as worried, embarrassed, and hope to help identify true events for story writing. We also continued our word study this week by focusing in on sentences. We explored sentence fragments and identified the subject and predicate of a sentence. 

Social Studies: We began our first social studies unit on Maps and Globes. Students learned about the globe this week, latitude and longitude, and parts of the map.

Upcoming Important Dates:

No School Columbus Day Monday October 8th 

Scholastic Orders due Thursday October 11th
Parent/Teacher Conferences Half Days Thursday and Friday October 25th and 26th

Dancers of the Week!

Weekly Update

Math
Topic 4 began this week with the exploration of mental math. Students practiced a variety of strategies to add and subtract mentally. On Tuesday we used rounding to estimate sums and differences, and Thursday students looked carefully at strategies for adding larger numbers accurately. 

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. We 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).

Constitution Day

We celebrated Constitution Day (Monday 9/17) as a grade students learned about what the Constitution is and why it is so important to us. We also developed a class Constitution together, by first looking back at the question students answered on the first day of school and developing a short list of rules that we will need to follow. Each student signed their name to these rules "ratifying" it as a class constitution. 

Science/ PBL
We kicked off science this week with our Engineers in Residence! Two engineers (one a former Kennedy ladybug!) visited 4th grade to introduce the Engineering Design Process and to tell us about what engineers do on a daily basis. Students have been assigned their first engineering task of the year: to design a wind powered Puff Mobile. Students had a chance to apply their cooperative group skills that we reviewed and practiced last week in a new group task. After identifying the problem and brainstorming ideas, groups began to illustrate a detailed plan before building. 

Our Engineer in Residence meeting with students to discuss their ideas on how to solve the problem.

Students practice effectively collaborative communication: each student has a chance to share his/her idea while group member listen and respond.

Dancers of the Week

Weekly Update

Reader's Workshop

Students are doing a great job with Reader’s Workshop routines. The focus of this week's minilessons allowed students to focus on their thinking as they read.  Students began using their writing journals to record their thinking about their reading through letter writing. We also reviewed narrative story elements such as plot, setting, characters, conflict, and theme. Students will gain a deeper understanding of each of these elements throughout the year through interactive read-alouds. 

Math

We have officially completed our first math topic (Topic 3 place value). Topic 3 assessments will come home today with directions on how to access the online test questions. This week students learned and practiced strategies for preparing for a math assessment. Also, students continued to practice math workshop routines by trying a few place value games and working on their place value detectives project.

Writer's Workshop
Students continued 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. 

Dancers of the Week

Important Dates:

Curriculum Night is Thursday September 20th 

          2 session 6:00-6:30pm and 6:40-7:10pm

Weekly Update

We have had a busy yet exciting second week of school here in RM 21! We continued to particiate in activities to get to know one another and our classroom, but also began some of our academic work.

Math: We have started our first math topic (Topic 3) on place value. This week students learned all about math workshop in 4th grade. In this topic students have extended their current knowledge of place value to write larger numbers in standard, expanded, and word form. We also discussed the relationship between each place value and how this relationship can help us compare and order numbers. 

Reader's Workshop: This week students were introduced to and practiced the 4 stages of reader's workshop; housekeeping, reading mini lesson, zone, and share. Together we reviewed previewing a books so that the books we choose are just right. Students will be using their reading journals to write letters back and fourth with Mrs. Williams discussing their thoughts about the books they are reading and reflecting on themselves as a strategic reader. Zone, or independent reading time, has been the favorite of the reader's workshop routines this week.

Writer's Workshop: Students created a small moment writing sample on Wednesday and Thursday. They have also worked to develop their hopes and dreams for 4th grade. Students first began to develop their ideas by creating a map of last years classroom and reflecting on challenges and proud moments from 3rd grade. Students have drafted and are working to publish their hopes and dreams for this year!

We also began the process of making our classroom rules by answering questions like... Why is school important? What does Mrs. Williams need to do in order to help you be successful? Our classroom should be ____ everyday. What do I need to do in order to be successful? 

This week students also learned more about how their brains work. We discussed the benefit of making mistakes and the importance of taking risks and really stretching your brain. Ask your child about the very challenging Paper Challenge. 

Our week ended today with our first Creative Art's Friday. Each Friday students will travel to each 4th grade classroom to participate in Poetry Workshop, Technology, PBL (Project Based Learning), and Art. This week in PBL students completed the Marshmallow Challenge. Small groups worked to build a spaghetti tower with a marshmallow on top. We reflected on the challenges and necessary skills for working in small groups to accomplish a task. (see pictures below)

Important Dates for Next Week:

Thursday 9/13 Picture Day
Thursday 9/20 Curriculum Night 6:00

Dance Party Friday - 4th graders get moving before beginning the day!

Our first Dancers of the Week!

PBL: