We’ve had a great start to the first quarter of fourth grade!
Please plan to come to our OPEN HOUSE this Thursday at 6pm ! It is an excellent view into what goes on during your child’s day, expectations and responsibilities, and ways you can support what we are doing here at home :) If you are unable to attend, we will put the PowerPoint Presentation on our Weebly.
In reading we are starting our year by setting up routines and procedures for our reading block. Students will be participating in a Daily 4, where they work on independent reading, writing, word work, and small group or individual work with a teacher. We are currently focusing on independent reading routines and building stamina. We've also started to learn CAFE reading strategies to help students improve on Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Expanding Vocabulary. Students are learning to record their thinking and use of strategies in their Reading Notebooks daily as part of independent reading. Responses in notebooks are an important part of a student’s reading grade.
Strategies we’ve learned over the past 2 weeks include:
We will move into exploring the concepts of theme, main idea, inferring and summarizing over the next 2 weeks. Students will focus on finding evidence in the text to support their ideas. We are reading Stone Fox as our mentor text.
In writing, we're already deep into our first writing project! Students are writing Biopoems, focusing on adding descriptive detail about themselves. We will use these poems to explore the writing process and illustrate self portraits to accompany them. We look forward to sharing these poems with you at Open House!
In math we have been diving into our amazing base ten place value system and working with multi digit numbers up to one million. Students have been building and decomposing numbers in different ways to understand their composition and how we can use and make sense of them. Understanding that the standard algorithm for addition and subtraction is based on the grouping and ungrouping of numbers into different forms, allows us to manipulate numbers and more easily access mental math. Next we will work with factors, multiples, prime and composite numbers to access multiplication of multi-digit numbers.
Study Skills/ Technology: We will be finishing up our Technology and Study Skills unit this week with a review on how to study and stay organized. We’ve gone over some common sense internet safety rules as well as procedures on how to use the technology devices we have in the classroom.
Our first Science investigation begins next week with a look into a rock and what it is made of. We will continue to look at both rocks and minerals and learn how geologists use properties to help identify and find practical uses for the earth materials. Please be sure you have reviewed and agreed to our science safety contract in your child’s journal. Students will be held to high safety and procedural expectations during our hands-on units.
Go Play Save Books are due this Tuesday, August 2nd! Please return the book or $30 and/or orders for additional books by the 2nd.
Important Upcoming Dates:
Go Play Save Fundraiser Due Date: Aug. 2
Open House: Aug. 4 6-7:30pm
Interim Reports: Aug. 12
Early Release/Track 2 Track Out: Aug. 19
Early Release/Track 1 Track Out & Report Cards: Sept. 9
Track 2 Track In: Sept. 12
Please plan to come to our OPEN HOUSE this Thursday at 6pm ! It is an excellent view into what goes on during your child’s day, expectations and responsibilities, and ways you can support what we are doing here at home :) If you are unable to attend, we will put the PowerPoint Presentation on our Weebly.
In reading we are starting our year by setting up routines and procedures for our reading block. Students will be participating in a Daily 4, where they work on independent reading, writing, word work, and small group or individual work with a teacher. We are currently focusing on independent reading routines and building stamina. We've also started to learn CAFE reading strategies to help students improve on Comprehension, Accuracy, Fluency and Expanding Vocabulary. Students are learning to record their thinking and use of strategies in their Reading Notebooks daily as part of independent reading. Responses in notebooks are an important part of a student’s reading grade.
Strategies we’ve learned over the past 2 weeks include:
- Checking for Understanding
- Rereading
- Stop & Think
- Visualizing
- Reading With Expression
- Stop for Interesting Words
We will move into exploring the concepts of theme, main idea, inferring and summarizing over the next 2 weeks. Students will focus on finding evidence in the text to support their ideas. We are reading Stone Fox as our mentor text.
In writing, we're already deep into our first writing project! Students are writing Biopoems, focusing on adding descriptive detail about themselves. We will use these poems to explore the writing process and illustrate self portraits to accompany them. We look forward to sharing these poems with you at Open House!
In math we have been diving into our amazing base ten place value system and working with multi digit numbers up to one million. Students have been building and decomposing numbers in different ways to understand their composition and how we can use and make sense of them. Understanding that the standard algorithm for addition and subtraction is based on the grouping and ungrouping of numbers into different forms, allows us to manipulate numbers and more easily access mental math. Next we will work with factors, multiples, prime and composite numbers to access multiplication of multi-digit numbers.
Study Skills/ Technology: We will be finishing up our Technology and Study Skills unit this week with a review on how to study and stay organized. We’ve gone over some common sense internet safety rules as well as procedures on how to use the technology devices we have in the classroom.
Our first Science investigation begins next week with a look into a rock and what it is made of. We will continue to look at both rocks and minerals and learn how geologists use properties to help identify and find practical uses for the earth materials. Please be sure you have reviewed and agreed to our science safety contract in your child’s journal. Students will be held to high safety and procedural expectations during our hands-on units.
Go Play Save Books are due this Tuesday, August 2nd! Please return the book or $30 and/or orders for additional books by the 2nd.
Important Upcoming Dates:
Go Play Save Fundraiser Due Date: Aug. 2
Open House: Aug. 4 6-7:30pm
Interim Reports: Aug. 12
Early Release/Track 2 Track Out: Aug. 19
Early Release/Track 1 Track Out & Report Cards: Sept. 9
Track 2 Track In: Sept. 12