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.
No comments:
Post a Comment