Class News

Reading Workshop:
Sequencing, character analysis, and author’s purpose are the three skills we are focusing on this week. Students will be reading the anthology story, “Grandfather’s Journey” by Allen Say. The story, Grandfather's Journey, is about a young man who leaves his homeland in Japan to travel to America. He falls in love with the country and its beautiful sights. When he begins to miss his homeland, he decides to travel back to Japan to see all the beautiful sights he has missed and to marry his sweetheart. Later on, he begins to miss his second home of California and takes his wife and child to America to live. When his daughter is grown, she leaves America to travel to Japan and raise her own family. She loves Japan and her son grows up hearing about his grandfather who lives in America. This boy ends up writing the story and eventually travels to America. It is in America that he comes to an understanding about how his grandfather felt about his travels. Students will be assessed on the vocabulary from this story and the skill sequencing.
Additionally, we are continuing to read the novel Sarah, Plain and Tall. Students will be reading this novel in class and may have assigned readings to take home and complete. This week students will learn about the different types of job they will complete as they are “talking back to books” during reading workshop time.
Writing Workshop:
During writing time, we are working on the grammar concept of commas with a story titled “When Comma Came to Town”. Additionally, we are expanding our writing skills by working on the trait of “Ideas”. We are reading the book, “A Bad Case of the Stripes” and discussing what the original idea was the author had in mind when writing the story. Also, ask your child about “Digging for Sapphires”… this was an activity we talked about when trying to narrow and focus on one idea for writing. Our next writing piece will be a personal narrative on a memorable event.
Word Study/Grammar:
This week will be focusing on Cycle 4 words which include the skill of R-controlled or Bossy R words. Students will be given an assessment on Thursday, October 27th.
Science:
Our fourth grade students are truly turning into scientists! They have been studying inquiry skills such as observation, classification, hypothesizing, and making models. Students worked at different stations in a lab experiment as they investigated further with these inquiry skills. Currently, students are studying the scientific method and have performed several experiments to help them understand the process. Recently, we followed through the steps of the scientific method to help us determine that Johnny was not ticklish, but Elizabeth was very ticklish! We are currently studying the effects of germs and mold. Ask your child about this interesting experiment! Next, week we will be conducting more exciting experiments and will have an open book test next Friday, October 28th. A vocabulary study guide will be coming home on Monday.
Social Studies:
Students have done an excellent job preparing for their Unit 1 test. First, they became an expert about one of Ohio’s four land regions within a cooperative group. Then, they taught the rest of the class about their land region while the class took notes. We also discussed land regions, how glaciers affected Ohio’s land, and map skills. We are looking at social studies through four different viewpoints: a historian, geographer, economist, and a political scientist. Everything we do in social studies will be seen through those four lenses. Students will be taking a Unit 1 test in social studies on Thursday, October 27th. A study guide will go home on Friday. Students will need to study the labeled Ohio map and review land regions. There will also be extended response question on the test about how glaciers changed Ohio’s land.
Math:
I am so impressed with the variety of strategies students know for regrouping with addition and borrowing with subtraction. We are talking about Start/Jump/End and Bottoms Bigger Better Borrow with subtraction. We are at the end of the place value unit. A study guide will go home later next week on this unit. Please help your child prepare at home for a test in early November. If you feel that your child is struggling with place value, rounding numbers, comparing numbers, addition with regrouping, and subtraction with borrowing please contact us so we can provide additional support.
Important:
*What does your child do when finished with a task? Well, there are plenty of challenging and enriching activities built into our busy days. We have writing, grammar, math, word study, social studies, and science centers set up and ready to be used in the class each day. We also offer “Red Herrings” which are mystery stories and students have to problem solve to come up with a solution to the mystery. Finally, we have set up a Kids blog where students share current events and comments about articles they find on www.tweentribune.com . Additionally, there are a number of brain teasers set up. Our goal is to expand the curriculum for your child.
*Please send in a 1-inch white binder with a clear sleeve on the front cover if you haven’t done so already.
*All parents have now been contacted about setting up a conference or have had a conference. Please let us know otherwise.
Dates to remember:
October 28-End of 1st Quarter
October 31-FALL FESTIVAL-2:00-2:45 PM
November 7 & 8 – No School