Crazy Halloween Week?!

Not in our class... it will be just as smooth as ever!  I hope everyone enjoyed Spooktacular.  I was at Elsmere's "Halloween Happenings" and fun was had by all (I volunteered in the quiet craft room, can you blame me?!) .

This week will bring closure to our first book groups.  We have been working at discussing what we read with our groups.  This is a skill that we will master in the next month or so... it takes a bit of time to feel comfortable and take risks.  We will also conclude our study of questioning.  After a little assessment on Friday, it seems that we need a few more days on the subject.

Writing Workshop has been a flurry of activity with our new fiction pieces.  These are independent works and they are well underway.  Most of my writers are drafting already.  We will be celebrating our Realistic Fiction pieces, drafting fiction, and getting great entries in our Writer's Notebooks.

Math has brought us to a unit on Addition and Subtraction after a quick stop for problem solving skills. We will be estimating and preforming exact calculations. I will continue to remind my mathematicians to check their work!

Reading Workshop and Math focused a lot on Fluency last week... reading and recording our voices on iPads and practicing math facts on the computer with XtraMath.  Ask your 4th grader about fluency!

Finally, we will be looking at Native American's today.  It will be a nice conclusion/introduction to Explorers.

A friendly reminder that spelling tests are Tuesday and Thursday... help your student with their words nightly!

Tuesday is our final conference day... it has been such a pleasure to meet with each of you over these three weeks.

Thanks for all you do!

Conference Day #2

This week will be another great week in 4th grade!  We are busy readers, writers, mathematicians, and historians. 

Chapter 4 in math will begin on Wednesday or Thursday after we spend a few days reading and solving word problems.  This seems to be an area that my mathematical friends could use some practice with. 

We will complete our study of Questioning this week as well as we practice answering questions from using short texts. I will be a sticker for complete sentences.  It is better to master this skill now!

Our Realistic Fiction pieces are complete and we will be moving onto a quick unit on Fiction. My writer's will be asked to follow the same steps we took with our realistic fiction pieces and complete the writing cycle on a topic of their choosing.  (They don't know this yet and WILL be excited!)

Our study of the Native American's will come to a conclusion this week and we will have a SS test on Thursday.  A study guide will be coming home on Tuesday along with flash cards for vocabulary words.  I encourage students to spend some time studying on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings.

Don't forget to verify the great reading that your students are completing at home on Reading Rewards each week by Monday morning! 

I look forward to more conferences on Wednesday.  It was wonderful to meet with my first 11 families last week.

Partners

We have math partners, reading partners, writing partners, and more.... it is so much fun to learn as a team!

This week we will be working hard with our partners to solve math problems, discuss what we are reading, and revise and edit our writing.  It is so helpful to use a friend to elevate our learning.

Here are a few pictures of us working with our partners!  Check out how engrossed we are with our learning!

Rounding Rap

Leveled Books

What is a "just right book" for your reader?  Here is a list to help!

Click to view: Leveled Book PDF

Place Value, Book Groups, and Publishing...

Last week was very busy! 

We finished chapter 2 (patterns) in math and had our second test, we revised much of our realistic fiction story and drafted our endings, we learned about the Native American's in NYS and practiced the pronunciation of their names, and finally we had a wonderful field trip to the Half Moon.  Phew.  I was also happy to hear that while I was at my conference on teaching writing, the students were well behaved!  

This week is going to be another full week! I am getting ready as I type and look forward to teaching some great concepts!

In math we will be taking a close look at place value.  This is a spiraling unit and I hope to build on previous knowledge.  This unit will take a little over a week.

In Writing Workshop, we will be revising and finishing up our first writing piece - Realistic Fiction.  We spent a lot of time working on an ending that could really happen.  Hopefully all pieces will be completed by Friday.

In Reading Workshop, we will be starting Questioning. We will focus on two types of questions (Right There and In your Head) broken into four smaller categories. The types of questions are determined based on where the answers can be found. Students will be asking questions and answering questions throughout this unit. One of the major shifts in the Common Core for students is being able to support their thinking and answers to questions with evidence from the text. We will discuss this at length during this unit.

Social Studies will focus on the differences between the two major Native American tribes in NYS the Iroquois and the Algonquin.  

Please don't forget to validate your readers entries on our Reading Rewards log each week!

Patterns, Native Americans, Drafting and more...

Last week was very productive and also full of fun.  I hope the same will be true this week!

In math, we will be wrapping up our short unit on patterns.  Again, the mastery of multiplication facts helps to make this unit much smoother!  We will be ready for our second math test on Wednesday or Thursday.  Please remember to continue working on math facts nightly!

In reading workshop, we are ready to begin small book groups and get into the "just right" chapter book.  Up to this point, we have been taking a close look at the genre's and literary terms. I have been flexible with the books that my readers have been choosing as we get into routines and structures in Reading Workshop.  Beginning Monday, we will all be in chapter books. I will also be sending home a list of books that are "just right"if you need help picking books at home or at the public library.

We have been been working hard during Writing Workshop time.  Students have created a strong main character and started thinking about their secondary characters. They have created a want for their character and thought about what is preventing the character from getting what they want. They have planned multiple story arcs or paths that their stories could take. Thursday we began drafting, keeping in mind writers should be showing not telling. This week we will look at strong leads, powerful endings and the heart of our story. 

After our first Vocab/SS Quiz, I have decided to spend more time on the vocabulary for our second unit (Native American's).  We started making flash cards for vocab words.  These cards will come home next week for continued practice.  We will be studying Native American's for several weeks.

We also have our Field Trip to the Half Moon this week!  We will jump ahead in SS slightly to learn about Henry Hudson on his ship the Half Moon.  Thank you for your support in our adventure.

I have two meetings this week during school time.  I am hoping for a perfect report from the substitutes!   Please remind your student that when a substitute is in our class the same rules apply as when I am there.  

Enjoy your Sunday!