Better Late Than Never

I admit it . . . I'm have never been good at keeping everyone up to date on what's going on in the class. But I guess late is better than never. Here are a few notes before I share what's going on in class.

  • We have our final 4th grade gathering this Friday at 2:20.
  • We also will be heading to the Sandhills Library on Friday.
  • Next Thursday, March 14 is Curriculum Night. We will most likely focus on math.
  • Thank you for making Student-led conferences such as success. When students share it is just as much of a surprise to me as it is to you. This year's group of students were such strong speakers. We should all be proud!
Math
We have finished working on how to solve multiplication problems using a variety of strategies including the traditional algorithm (that's the one you and I grew up). One of the things parents can do to help out in this area is to help their child get their multiplication tables memorized. One website that helps do this is https://www.multiplication.com/. 

We have moved into division. Right now we are reviewing division concepts. But just like multiplication, we will discuss division strategies, such as partial products, before moving into the traditional algorithm.

Science
We are currently moving into our next science unit on light and sound. We will be asking students to bring in flashlights if they have one (we are also purchasing new flashlights). If you have a flashlight your child can keep in their backpack that would be helpful for this unit.

Read Aloud
We just finished reading Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson. It proved to be a great book that served as a wonderful touchstone text for our study of the Revolutionary War. We are currently reading Gossamer by Lois Lowry. This book is more fantasy. I don't normally read books such as this, but it is proving to aid our rich discussions.

Social Studies
We just finished studying the events that led up to the Revolutionary War. We are now about to study some of the pivotal battles of the war such as Bunker Hill, Cowpens, and Yorktown. We also watch a video series put out by the History Channel called "The Story of US." Each video serves as a touchstone text for us to go back and make connections.

Reading
We are currently studying various reading elements through our study of William Steig (he wrote Sylvester and the Magic Pebble which was a popular picture book when you and I were kids). We just finished looking at different types of conflict in a story and we're moving into different point of view such as first person, third person limited (when the teller of the story can get into only one head), and third person omniscient (when the teller of the story knows what everyone is thinking).

Writing
Because of student-led conferences, I have allowed students to do more freewriting. We are moving away from that to more formalized writing. This week we will be coming back to finding evidence in a piece of writing to back up an opinion. We are doing this as a review because we will be conducting our second district-wide writing practice assessment.


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