Happy Thanksgiving!
Brrr! The cold days are finally upon us. 4B is still getting used to the weather change and forget jackets at home and sometimes at school. We will get better at reminding them at the end of the day. Thank you for your patience.
I am sure everyone is busy planning for the upcoming holidays. It gets a bit hectic but always exciting. Especially for 4th graders. We are very busy in class working with lots of new concepts and developing stamina for longer assignments. One example is the Thanksgiving project that is being worked on at home right now. This is an example of a performance task that students will be asked to complete as the take the new Common Core assessments a year from now. It is a very different type of test where students are asked to apply their skills and knowledge in different ways. It also requires them to "stick with it" when it gets challenging and hard. It is supposed to be hard. I am excited to see them share their work this Friday.
Currently in math we are working on multi-digit multiplication and division. Your child had work this week that required them to use a new program called IXL. We have a trial subscription at this time, but it is great for allowing me to differentiate what the students are working on when they practice. I still need to teach the skills but then they can practice independently with feedback. I had several students come in the next day asking me to teach them something new because they wanted to move forward! How fantastic is that. I plan to use this program to supplement our practice for as long as I can. You may want to have your child log in and then take a look at the reports. You will be able to see what they are doing and how well they are doing it.
In writing, we are working on personal narratives and using dialogue. We continue to integrate paragraph of the week as well, to strengthen and develop our paragraph structure. During December we will be writing persuasive pieces as we will test and review toys and books for the holiday season. How fun ( and secretively motivating!!)
As for reading, we are coming to the completion of our first round of book clubs. Some groups are reading electronically while others are reading paper copies. Each group set their reading amounts, meet weekly to discuss thoughts and ideas based on my questions or assignments and will finish up with a project that shares their book. These projects will be completed in class.
In science we have begun our units on magnetism and electricity. These are great units for this time of the year because they are very hands on and extremely interesting. We will be reading City of Ember when we return and will try to build our own "mobile lights" with our supplies and batteries.
And finally, after much anticipation on our part, we will be having our FIRST Mystery Skype this Friday. I have connected with another teacher in a different part of the country and our classrooms will meet via Skype. Each student in 4B will have a job to do during our meeting as we ask questions, eliminate states and regions, use atlas' and Google Earth, analyze answers and then finally guess where they live. All of this supports our learning of geography and landforms, as well our desire to work with others around the country and the world. We are hoping to make this a bi-monthly activity and hope to meet many wonderful kids from all over!
Looking forward to Grandfriend's Day on Tuesday from 10-11. We have great plans for the morning and are excited to show our room and friends to our families.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
~Lisa
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