Literacy - We began literacy this year by reviewing some elements of literature (Plot, Characters, Setting, etc) as I began our first read aloud book, The Best School Year Ever. We reviewed "story mountain" and detailed how stories and movies tend to follow a pattern. We spent some time figuring out the best way to find independent reading books (ask your child about the 5 finger rule!) and we began our beginning of the year reading assessments.
Writing - We started our school year creating a graffiti board of ideas to help get our creative juices flowing. Students prepared their Writer's notebooks with a proofreading cheat sheet and wrote our first "piece" of writing about our summer vacation. Students then worked in pairs to help practice proofreading stories. We will look to begin our Narrative writing unit in the coming week. Math - We began 4th grade by doing a quick recap of end of 3rd grade skills. These include place value, rounding, and comparing numbers. We also completed our beginning of the year math assessments and I have been impressed with the previous knowledge already displayed by my new class! We toured our Math Workbook and began completing some early pages. We introduced some math games and worked well in groups. For your reference, single digit multiplication skills are a must! While many of my students have this skill mastered, please take time to practice with your child. This will serve as a great foundation for higher-level math skills Science - We began our first unit which will include Living Things in Their Environment, Energy in an Ecosystem, and How Ecosystems Change. We began by reviewing a pond ecosystem, defining living and non-living organisms that make up an environment, and discussed some previous knowledge about carnivores, herbivores (they've eaten herbs before!), and omnivores. We closed the week by having students drawing and labeling their own pond ecosystem. MicroSociety - We had our first town hall meeting in which the character trait of the month (Assertiveness) was detailed for the student body. We spent some time reviewing differences between agencies and ventures, allowed students who held government positions last year share examples of their daily work, and began to go through a list of some potential ventures that sounded appealing for 4th graders. As students will be getting paid for their Micro jobs (as well as their classroom jobs), we closed the week by spending some time creating wallets to hold our money. ** We had a great first full week of school. Expectations have been set, but need to be continually reinforced. Please remember all students are to complete a nightly reading (20 minutes) and a writing prompt in their Reader's notebook (3-5 sentences summarizing the passage they read). As the year progresses, unfinished work from class may be sent home to complete for homework. You can check the homework tab of my website for more information.
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April 2018
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