November Update

Happy November!

Here's what we have been up to and what's coming up next!

Reading- We have worked on looking at main characters in depth.  We practiced taking notes while we were readingon their feelings, character traits, motivations, actions and words.  We have also begun the skill of questioning, which is a major part of their first trimester learning and will carry on throughout the year.  Good readers have questions that they wonder about before, during and after their reading.  Good readers also reflect on the text when they are done and develop questions to ask themselves and their peers.  We have talked about Thick and Thin questions, and also Right There, Think and Search and On My Own questions.  Your child should be able to tell you the difference between these types of questions.  Ask them to develop questions after they have finished their independent reading at home and share them with you.
Just a reminder that October reading logs will be due on Friday November 7th.  I hang on to the reading logs and in January we all examine our own logs to see all of the great reading we have done at the beginning of the year and then again at the end of the year.
Next we will be working on theme.  Themes are universal lessons taken away from a story.  This means that multiple stories can have the same theme.  We will talk about lessons we learn from short readings such as fairy tales and talk about big lessons taught throughout chapter books.  Most children's books have a theme so ask your child if they know the lesson the author or main character is trying to teach them. It is usually displayed through a problem and how the character solves the problem.

Writing- We have been producing an incredible amount of writing in class.  Although you do not see

it come home because not everything we write makes it to publication, the children have been writing in excess of 35 minutes without stopping on a daily basis.  They have been creating realistic fiction narratives.  We have talked about character development, showing and not telling, setting scenes, turning on the lights in our writing, the difference between fantasy and realistic fiction. This past week the students had a "Spooky Story Starter" to use to begin a realistic fiction narrative.  They have come up with some really creative thrillers!  We will be picking one of our narratives to bring to publication in the next few weeks and hopefully have a celebration of writing before the holidays to view all of their wonderful work.  More on this to come! 

Math- We have been working on finding factor pairs for up to the number 100.  Students are able to find and represent factor pairs as arrays.  Students are also able to break apart larger multiplication problems into smaller ones in order to solve them.  We just recently started algebra and patterns.  Students are able to identify and extend patterns.  They are able to solve for a letter (variable) when the value is given.  The next chapter is multiplying by one digit on the bottom, with up to four digits on the top, followed by multiplying by two digits on the bottom.  Please continue to have students practice their math facts on a daily basis.  Not knowing their multiplication facts will cause them to have difficulty grasping the other math skills throughout the year from here on out.  If they are spending too much time trying to figure out the fact, they will have a difficult time understanding the process.

S.S. and Science-  We just had our landforms test which overlaps both Social Studies and Science.  We will be finishing up our Erosion unit over the next two weeks or so and moving on to our Matter Unit.   We have conducted at least one, but sometimes more, science experiments per week where the students use stream tables, earth materials and water to test out different circumstances which cause erosion.  They have loved making a mess and playing with water, while still grasping some difficult concepts that are happening right here in our Ocean State.  In Social Studies we have begun to study the land, climate, people, plants and animals of the Northeast.  In a few weeks the students will have a quiz on the location of the nine states and capitals of this region.  We will then move on to a study of Rhode Island (my favorite unit).

**All photos displayed are from a math game the students played a few weeks ago.

No School for students on the following days:

Tuesday November 4th: Election Day
Tuesday November 11th: Veterans Day
The week of November 24th -28th:
Monday the 24th will be Parent Teacher Conferences beginning at 2:00-scheduling is in progress!!
Tuesday the 25th and Wednesday the 26th will be Professional Development for teachers
Thursday the 27th and Friday: Thanksgiving Weekend!

The first trimester ends November 14th.

October Update

I can't believe it is almost October!  This month has flown by and we are really in the swing of things.  Here is what we've been up to.


Reading: For the first few weeks we worked on  setting up our reading library.  The students all received their reading levels and selected books on that level.  They now have book bags with three books in them.  Two free choice books, one can be a chapter book and one can be a picture book if they choose, and one book on their level from our classroom library.

Last week we made reading salad.  Reading is a combination of thinking and text.  We brainstormed what we think about when we read and came up with: asking questions, making connections, visualizing, and inferring.  Every time we stopped to talk about text, we put a red card in the salad bowl, for each "thought" we had we put a green card.

This week we are looking for interesting language and thinking about why the author might have used it and why we think it is interesting.

Writing:  We have been working on reviewing constructed response format and practicing incorporating details from the text into our reading responses.  We have also been working on building our writer's notebook ideas to begin our first narrative, which will be a realistic fiction story.

Human Number Line

Math:  We have completed chapter one in our math books, which was all about place value, comparing numbers and rounding numbers up to the millions.  We are currently finishing up chapter 2 which includes estimating sums and differences, and adding and subtracting large numbers with and without regrouping.  We will be moving on to understanding factors and multiples and generating and analyzing patterns after this.

Math Facts:  It is imperative that students know their math facts as it will make other concepts  taught in fourth grade math that much easier to learn.  Each Monday, Wednesday and Friday we take a fast fact timed test.  It begins with addition and subtraction and moves on to multiplication.  Congratulations to our first few rounds of students who have passed and moved on to the next level!

S.S.  We have been working on studying the seven continents and the oceans.  Students have had some practice with latitude and longitude, hemispheres, and directions, as well as creating their own globes.  We will be moving on to studying landforms and climates of our country and then narrow our geography down by regions of the United States.  Each region will have a states and capitals map test that accompanies it throughout the year.

Science:  Last week we completed our first scientific method together by doing an experiment.  Students worked together to investigate which tennis ball bounced the highest:  a room temperature ball, a refrigerated ball and a frozen ball.  Our results were unanimously the room temperature ball. This week we introduced erosion and the students will be doing lots of messy experiments with sand, dirt and water, which they are all very excited about!