Reading Workshop
In
reading we read a play together as a class.
The play was a folktale called Anansi Tells Stories of the World. We were able to take a close look at what
makes plays similar and different to a story.
We found that we need to play close attention to who is talking and
where each scene is taking place. By the
end of the week we were able to work on a cooperative group activity around
this play.
This
week we will start to take a look at poems.
We are going to pay special attention to what we can infer from poems
that the author doesn’t directly tell us.
We will also take a look at the language that is used in the poems that
we read. Similes, metaphors, and
onomatopoeia will be some of the types of language that we talk about.
Writing Workshop
In
writing workshop we are becoming coaches for our narrative writing. Last week we
looked at our writing from October. It
was amazing to see how much progress we made in the past 5 months. Then, we took a look at a checklist of what
is expected in a fourth graders writing.
Based on the checklist, the kids were able to determine what area of
their writing that they wanted to improve.
After that, each student attended a “training camp” depending on the
area they were going to improve on in their writing. Each team worked on specific activities that
would help them train and get better as a writer. The kids were then able to take their new
learning and apply it to their writing from October.
Our
overall goal is to create a writing “training” video. We will give a coaching tip to show other
kids how they can improve one area in their writing. The kids are very excited that they are going
to be able to train and help other students!
Math Workshop
In
math we worked on adding and subtracting fractions with the same denominator. The kids worked very hard with this
concept.
We also
had a few discussions about how we use fractions in everyday life. Any time you and your child come across “real
world” fractions, it would be great to point it out. One idea we discussed as a class was if they
were making a recipe at home, they could talk about doubling the recipe and
discuss how that would change the total amount of each ingredient. We also talked about if a recipe calls for 1
cup of sugar and all you have to measure is a ¼ cup, how many ¼ cups would it
take to make a cup. These are all great
real world applications of fractions.
Coming Soon....
- As a reminder, you should have received directions last week on how to sign up for conferences. Conference sign up begins on April 1st.
- Also, MCAS testing starts next week. Fourth graders have testing on Tuesday, March 31st, Thursday, April 2nd, and Tuesday, April 7th.
I
hope everyone has a great week!
~Jen
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