Sunday, September 22, 2019

Manning's Message


Curriculum Night
It was a pleasure seeing many of you on curriculum night!  If you were not able to make the meeting, your student brought home some information. Please look at the Blog photo permission and the Class contact sheets and return them to me.  I am looking forward to collaborating with you to ensure your children have a successful fourth grade year!

iPad Update
We are working to complete the essential Digital Citizenship lessons and the students are learning about how to be responsible and respectful in the digital world, how to protect their private information, and what to do when they encounter mean or inappropriate material online.

Our Digital Citizenship lessons come from a site called Common Sense Media.  This is a non-profit organization, which offers information, advice and tools for helping teachers, parents and kids navigate media and the digital world.   Check them out at https://www.commonsensemedia.org/homepage


Subject Update
We continue to establish and practice our classroom routines and procedures.  The students have been working well as a community and are working toward earning community points to have a classroom celebration.

Language Arts
Daily Five and Cafe
Students have been learning and practicing the processes for reading and writing workshops.   Using the Daily Five structure, the students will be busy completing meaningful literacy tasks.  Their choices will be *Read to self, *Work on Writing, * Word Work, * Read to Someone, and *Listen to Reading.  Currently, we are focused on increasing our stamina to work independently during Read to Self, Read to Someone and Work on Writing.  The students are learning to work independently, and soon I will be also introducing the Word Work.  While the students are completing their literacy tasks, I will be working with small groups or conferencing with individual students.  Currently, I am completing DRA’s (Developmental Reading Assessment) with each student.

While Daily Five is our structure for Literacy Block, the CAFÉ is what we study during the block.  CAFÉ is an acronym for the components of reading:
C-Comprehension, A-Analysis, F-Fluency, E-Expand Vocabulary. The students will learn reading strategies within each category, and these strategies will become tools for them to use to help themselves become better readers and writers.  I will keep you informed when new strategies are introduced. Then, when you read with your child at home, you will be able to reinforce these concepts.

Strategies introduced or to be introduced in the coming weeks are:  Comprehension:  Check for Understanding, Monitor and Fix-up, Back-up and Reread; Ask Questions: Analysis- Ask Questions; Expand Vocabulary- Tune into Interesting Words.  Ask your student how they use these strategies while reading.

In writing, the students have been practicing using the fourth-grade writing expectations to write in complete sentences by making sure they have a subject and a predicate in each sentence.  We are beginning narrative writing and they have been introduced to the narrative writing diamond.  This week we are brainstorming topics for personal and fictional narratives.  Students will begin planning their narrative using a four-square format (opening, setting, main event and extended ending) before they begin to write their opening.   

Mathematics
We have completed Chapter One: Working with Whole Numbers, and the students took their assessment last Tuesday.  They have reviewed and corrected their mistakes.  Many students found that they made errors because of rushing or not paying close attention to their work.  We have identified these as “Sloppy” mistakes.  Finally, students reflected on what they did well on the test and how they can improve based on their mistakes.  The test, their reflection sheet and a BAN document explaining the test went home last week.  Please review them with your student, sign and return to school if you have not already done so.  I will keep these in a portfolio for your child, which they will bring home at the end of each trimester. 

Students will be continuing to learn about the types of mistakes and how we can learn from them.  Check out this article on mistakes by Eduardo Briceño, Co-Founder and CEO of Mindset Works.


This week students will begin Chapter Two: Estimation and Number Theory.  In this chapter the students learn about estimation, factors, and multiples.  Some of the skills that we practice will be rounding. A strategy they have learned for rounding is this rhyme “Five or more, raise the score.  Four or less, let it rest and stay the same.”  Students will also learn how to decide whether to estimate or calculate an exact answer.  We will also practice how to find common factors and common multiples.  Students will also learn about prime and composite numbers.  Students should be practicing their addition, subtraction and multiplication facts nightly.  I will give the students a multiplication chart to assist them with the work we are doing during this chapter.  However, it is important that they know their multiplication facts as subsequent skills are based on these facts.  

I have signed all students up for an XtraMath account and sent a letter home today with instructions on how to get into their account.  We have discussed a variety of ways to practice facts (ready-made flash cards, home-made flash cards (based on problems missed on tests), flash card websites, or other websites such as Fact Monster http://www.factmonster.com/math/flashcards.html, and Greg Tang Math http://www.gregtangmath.com.  You can find many more Math websites in the Math Center at the column to the right of this letter.

Science
We have begun our science lessons by setting up their science notebooks and learning the format for using them.  We have also been learning about asking scientific questions vs non-scientific questions. Scientific questions are testable. A testable question can be answered by is experimenting, observing and measuring.
Check out this video about asking scientific questions.



Social Studies
We have begun our study of map skills.  Students are learning about the components of a map: title, legend, compass rose, and scale. This week they will be learning about the four hemispheres and latitude and longitude.

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