Seasons Greetings Families! -
I hope you are all staying warm and getting back into the Wisconsin winter weather. Things may be cold outside, but this group of students is still red hot with their learning and kindness towards each other. Here is a snapshot of what we have been doing in the classroom and ways to have dialogue at home, to help support learning. Again, this is just a quick glimpse of whats going on. There are more detailed and standard aligned language on each one of the subject tabs above.
During our reading block, our class has been focused in on a number of different things. First, we have had a number of 'reading skill' objectives that we have been working on and will continue to be. Maybe your child has mentioned that we have been; summarizing, making connections, practicing re-reading to promote fluency and reading ahead to gain clues to understand more challenging language. These skills were exposed in third grade and are explored now with a much deeper perspective and emphasis on what sparked their connection or what clues in the book caused their thoughts. Along with zoning in on these reading skills, the kiddos have also had a steady diet of independent novels, a shared small group text, a common shared text (mainly current events & news from around the world) and a read a loud book that I read to the class each day.
In math, we are now into our fourth unit. This unit is locked in on addition, subtraction and a deeper understanding of number & place value. As fourth graders, the students are asked to work with, add & subtract fluently and accurately work with numbers up to one million. What we are doing in class is developing strategies and when to use certain techniques (example: regrouping or carrying digits into another place value, or regrouping or borrowing during subtraction). Along with getting a lot of practice sharpening their addition and subtraction skills, this unit also covers rounding, greater than & less than, using logic when thinking about the size of number and getting a better understanding of how large each place value is (ones place, tens, hundreds,.... all the way up to one million).
In social studies things are really taking off. We just wrapped up our learning of Native people of Wisconsin and a great research project. We are moving towards how other groups of people arrived in North America and some big events of our countries history (French Fur trade, English colonies, French & Indian War, Revolutionary war, colonization,....) just to name a few. We will have many articles and reading options based on our social studies learning, so, hopefully, you will hear a lot more from your child about what is happening in class.
Our writing block has also been really, really impressive. We just concluded our work with fictional stories and learning more about the structure of stories & story telling elements. We worked at great lengths to connect how to introduce ones story, create interest (with drama, a problem, excitement, or hooking your reader) identify the biggest event of the story with when we read books to ourselves. The 'one hand washes another' style of learning about writing with reading others writing is very helpful. Your student did a wonderful job at creating their own story and were asked to develop scenery, characters, action and identify where and when action or interest would take place.
Now we changed gears a bit and have gotten into persuasive and opinion style essays. The biggest change is that our students will be much busier researching and finding complementing arguments to their point of view than being creative and imaginative with story telling. Along with research and attempting to persuade, the five paragraph essay and its form will be a staple of our weeks ahead.
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Upcoming Dates -
December 24th - January 2nd : NO SCHOOL - WINTER BREAK
I hope you are all staying warm and getting back into the Wisconsin winter weather. Things may be cold outside, but this group of students is still red hot with their learning and kindness towards each other. Here is a snapshot of what we have been doing in the classroom and ways to have dialogue at home, to help support learning. Again, this is just a quick glimpse of whats going on. There are more detailed and standard aligned language on each one of the subject tabs above.
During our reading block, our class has been focused in on a number of different things. First, we have had a number of 'reading skill' objectives that we have been working on and will continue to be. Maybe your child has mentioned that we have been; summarizing, making connections, practicing re-reading to promote fluency and reading ahead to gain clues to understand more challenging language. These skills were exposed in third grade and are explored now with a much deeper perspective and emphasis on what sparked their connection or what clues in the book caused their thoughts. Along with zoning in on these reading skills, the kiddos have also had a steady diet of independent novels, a shared small group text, a common shared text (mainly current events & news from around the world) and a read a loud book that I read to the class each day.
In math, we are now into our fourth unit. This unit is locked in on addition, subtraction and a deeper understanding of number & place value. As fourth graders, the students are asked to work with, add & subtract fluently and accurately work with numbers up to one million. What we are doing in class is developing strategies and when to use certain techniques (example: regrouping or carrying digits into another place value, or regrouping or borrowing during subtraction). Along with getting a lot of practice sharpening their addition and subtraction skills, this unit also covers rounding, greater than & less than, using logic when thinking about the size of number and getting a better understanding of how large each place value is (ones place, tens, hundreds,.... all the way up to one million).
In social studies things are really taking off. We just wrapped up our learning of Native people of Wisconsin and a great research project. We are moving towards how other groups of people arrived in North America and some big events of our countries history (French Fur trade, English colonies, French & Indian War, Revolutionary war, colonization,....) just to name a few. We will have many articles and reading options based on our social studies learning, so, hopefully, you will hear a lot more from your child about what is happening in class.
Our writing block has also been really, really impressive. We just concluded our work with fictional stories and learning more about the structure of stories & story telling elements. We worked at great lengths to connect how to introduce ones story, create interest (with drama, a problem, excitement, or hooking your reader) identify the biggest event of the story with when we read books to ourselves. The 'one hand washes another' style of learning about writing with reading others writing is very helpful. Your student did a wonderful job at creating their own story and were asked to develop scenery, characters, action and identify where and when action or interest would take place.
Now we changed gears a bit and have gotten into persuasive and opinion style essays. The biggest change is that our students will be much busier researching and finding complementing arguments to their point of view than being creative and imaginative with story telling. Along with research and attempting to persuade, the five paragraph essay and its form will be a staple of our weeks ahead.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Upcoming Dates -
December 24th - January 2nd : NO SCHOOL - WINTER BREAK