Weekly Update

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 narrative stories this month. 

Readers' Workshop: This week students participated in our first interactive read aloud of the year, Mighty Jack by Ben Hatke. We focused on learning and practicing strategies to read and understand a graphic novel. Students also choose an individual goal to improve their reading comprehension. Mighty Jack  is a high interest, action-packed adventure that we all enjoyed! Many students are looking forward to reading the next two books in the series independently. 

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: 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. A study guide for the first social studies assessment of the year went home today (Test on Friday Oct 11th). Students are encouraged to study a little each night by making flash cards, making a quiz, or creating a game. 

Science: Students continued to work in collaborative groups on Puff Mobiles. 

Dancers of the Week

Homework Help

Please use the link for directions below for help with subtracting across zeros.

4.5 Subtracting Across Zeros: Visual learning

or go the www.pearsonrealize.com

1. log in and go to Table of Contents
2. go to Topic 4
3. Click on lesson 4.5
4. Click on Subtracting Across Zeros: Visual Learning

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 on Wednesday and Friday students looked carefully at strategies for adding and subtracting larger numbers accurately. Students have a quiz on Topic 4 next Thursday. 

Writer's Workshop
Our focus this week in writer's workshop was on generating narrative story ideas. We talked about how important people, places, and things as well as strong emotions can be a sources for our story ideas.

Constitution Day

We celebrated Constitution Day (Tuesday 9/17) and 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 questions students answered on the first day of school and developing a short list of rules that we will need to follow. Each student signed his/her 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 effective collaborative communication: each student has a chance to share his/her idea while group members listen and respond.

Social Studies:

This week we also began our first social studies unit of the year, in which students gain a deeper understanding of the globe and how to read and interpret maps. Students will use the skills learned in this unit throughout the entire year as we later explore Canada, Mexico, and the Regions of the US. 

Dancers of the Week

Weekly Update

Math

We have officially completed our first math topic (Topic 3 place value). Topic 3 assessments will come home today. 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 or working on a 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 and published the final copy on their balloon. 

Creative Arts Friday began this week. In PBL students made newspaper shoes in collaborative groups. Students reflected on the task by answering "what when well" and "what did not go well when working in your group?".  The answers to these questions will help us develop traits of a good collaborative team. Check out the shoe creating process below:

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Dancers of the Week

Homework Help: Rounding

Weekly Update

We have had a busy yet exciting second week of school here in RM 21! We continued to participate 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 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!

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

Our first Dancers of the Week!

Important Dates for Next Week:

Thursday 9/12 Picture Day
Thursday 9/12 Curriculum Night
      Session 1: 6:00-6:30pm
      Session 2: 6:40-7:10pm