This Week in LL38.....

     We had lots going on last week.  We tried to stay warm inside on Friday with the frigid temperatures outside.

     With all the snowy and cold weather, it made sense to have our first "snowball" fight of the season! There's nothing better than an INDOOR snowball fight on a freezing cold day! Our snowball fight helped us review and practice the difference between factors, prime, and composite numbers.

Here is a video our one round....

Factors Snowball Fight 

Checking our answers and discussing our thinking with partners.

Reader's Workshop
  This week we started to think more deeply about a text focusing in on the theme or message of the story.  We learned that authors will write a story to try to teach the reader about an issue or concern that matters to kids.  We brainstormed some examples of issues/concerns that matter to kids.  This helped us to think a little more about A Day's Work by Eve Bunting and what she is trying to teach kids in her book.  To deepen our thinking about books, we also look for objects or details that repeat in a text. In this story we were able to notice that the relationship between the grandfather and his grandson was an important one that kept repeating.  It was amazing to see how deep the kids were thinking about this text after many conversations about theme!

Ideas/Concerns that Matter to Kids

Calling all MYSTERY READERS…

On Friday, December 23rd we have a full day of school.  To kick start our winter vacation, we are going to be participating in a fun reading activity called, “Booked In.”   We are going to spend a large part of that day reading some great books.  To add to the fun, I thought it would be great if we could host some MYSTERY READERS.  

What is a MYSTERY Reader?

We are looking for parents, grandparents, or siblings to volunteer to read a favorite picture book or poem to our class on the morning of Friday, December 23rd.  The mystery will be that the students will not know who is coming in to read to our class.  It will be a great surprise for all of the kids.  

Here is what you can do….

☺  Volunteer as a mystery reader…let me know via email or a sealed envelope if you are available to read a picture book or poem on the morning of Friday, December 23rd.  

☺  Shhh….keep this a secret from the students!  ☺

If you can’t volunteer to read that day, it is completely fine.  I know that this is a very busy time of year.  Please let me know if you are available to be a Mystery Reader by Tuesday, December 20th so that I can put together a schedule.

Small Group Morning Work.... 

     For morning work on Wednesday we worked on a word problem in small groups.  After discussing the problem with their group, each group decided how to start solving the problem.  It was interesting to see the different approaches and strategies that groups used to solve this problem.  After solving the problems we listened to some groups share their strategies.  We were able to notice similarities and differences in the approach.  This helps us think flexibly as mathematicians!

The problem:  A kangaroo eats about 105 pounds of food a week.  If a kangaroo eats the same amount of food per day, how many pounds of food does a kangaroo eat a day?

Writer's Workshop

     We are quickly approaching the end of our Literary Essay unit.  Many of the kids are starting to tape their Beyond the Cover book trailers.  We will be posting them later this week for all to listen to!  Be on the lookout for an email with the link to the website where they will all be posted.  

I hope everyone has a great week!  

~Jen

This Week in LL38....

I hope everyone stayed warm this weekend!  We have another busy week ahead in fourth grade!


Reading Workshop
     We are really starting to focus on stopping and jotting as we read.  This will help us as we start to think more deeply about the texts we are reading.  We practiced this as a class while reading A Day's Work by Eve Bunting.  The kids then practiced stopping and writing down their thinking with their independent reading books.  This can be difficult for kids to do at times, but we are working on reminding ourselves to at least stop every few pages if we don't have an immediate reaction to an event.  Stopping and jotting will help us to gather and collect "clues" that will help us to create a bigger idea such as the theme of the story.
     We also started to "rate our jot" so that we could see what the goal and expectations for fourth graders are.  We will continue to practice this throughout the upcoming week as well.
      While your child is reading at home, you could ask him/her to tell you about an idea that he/she has about the book.  Your child could then back up his/her thinking with evidence from the text.

Social Studies
     Last week your child was assigned an Immigration Interview to go along with our Immigration Unit.  This is due on Wednesday this week.  Your child brought home the directions along with an example on Monday last week. 
     The students were able to travel through Ellis Island last week.  We used a website that allows the students to go through each stop that an immigrant would have traveled to on their journey to America.  They were able to watch videos as well as look at authentic pictures.  We will be discussing their immigrant journey this week.

Math Workshop
     For the next two weeks we will take a break from Menu Math.  We will focus on math vocabulary during this time instead.  They will start to fill out Four Square Vocabulary cards.  This will allow the students to think about important words in a sentence and with a picture.  I am hoping that allowing kids to think about words in different ways will help to solidify the word for them.  Here is an example of what this will look like.
                                                              
I hope everyone has a great week!

Jen
   

This Week in LL38.....

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I can't believe that we are at the end of the first trimester.  Just a reminder that we have a half day of school on Wednesday.

Goal Setting

     Last week we took an end of trimester 1 assessment in math along with a few fluency assessments.  After taking the assessment, students reflected on their work.  We talk a lot throughout the school year about the importance of assessments as a tool to help understand what a student understands and what a student needs to continue practicing.  An assessment also helps me to plan small groups that target a specific skill area that a group of students needs to work on.  After the trimester 1 assessment last week, the kids each took a look at their own assessment.  They carefully looked at the area that they felt that they needed to focus on the most based on the results of their assessment.  We looked for patterns in the "needs" of the class.  Many students took risks and shared what they needed to work on with the class.  We then formed small group "topics."   Our topics were vocabulary, rereading the problem, knowing the "facts" (ex:  multiplication, addition), and copying work over correctly.  Each of the kids signed up for one area.  We will start meeting to work on that skill over the next few weeks.

Immigration
    We continued our learning about Ellis Island last week.  We started to think about the reasons people decided to immigrate as well as what their journey might have been like.  We used the wordless picture book called The Arrival to learn about the difficulties that immigrants faced on their journey to a new county.  Although The Arrival is a book, we were able to start watching the video of the book.  It is amazing at all of the discussions that we are having about the characters, the mood of the music that goes along with the book, as well as inferring the meaning of some of the symbols in the story.  We will continue to watch this during the week.

The kids had a lot of fun discussing family members that they knew had immigrated to the United States.  Be on the lookout for an immigrant interview page coming home this week.  

Math Workshop
     After taking the trimester and fluency assessment, we started learning about division.  We are learning the area model for division.  This allows us to use our knowledge and understanding about area to solve a division problem.  Here is an example of how we are solving division problems using the area model.  We will continue to practice this throughout the upcoming week as well.



I hope everyone has a great week.

~ Jen

Coming up this week.....

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  It's a such a nice time to have a break from all of the regular routines.  I am hoping that the kids are ready to come back.

Math Workshop
     Last week we worked on solving word problems and really taking our time and thinking through each problem.  We also worked on being ACTIVE LEARNERS and LISTENERS instead of passive learners.  Ask your child what he/she learned about being an ACTIVE LEARNER.  This will be something that we will focus on over the next few weeks.  We practiced a lot during math, but it works for all areas of life!
     Last week we also worked on a vocabulary project.  We used some of our math vocab and created a "visual" for the vocab word.  We were able to share our visuals and now they are hanging for everyone to use as a resource.  Ask your child what word and visual he/she created and if there are any that stand out that a classmate made.
     This week we will start division in math.  We will learn and practice two strategies for division.  One is the area model for division and the other is number disks for division.  Learning the standard algorithm (the way we learned division) is not part of the fourth grade curriculum.  Just like multiplication, we want the students to have a good foundation and an understanding of the WHY of multiplication and division.  By next year, they will be ready to move towards the algorithm.

Writing Workshop
     Students learned about an upcoming project that we will be creating in Writer's Workshop called Beyond the Cover.  The kids will be writing a second literary essay and then will create an iMovie book trailer using their essay.  These books trailers will be posted onto a website for classmates, parents, and other teachers to go on, watch, and comment on!  It is so important for writers to have a purpose for their writing and have a solid understanding of their audience!

Social Studies
      We will be moving back to social studies this week.  We left off in the Northeast Region of the U.S.A.  This time we will "zoom" in to New York and learn about immigration and Ellis Island.  We will have lots of fun learning about an immigrants journey to Ellis Island.  Be sure to ask your child what they are learning about Ellis Island!

I hope everyone has a fabulous week!

~Jen

I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend!  Last week was certainly busy and exciting!

Acton Discovery Museum
     Thank you to all of the parents that were able to take time out of their day to chaperone on our field trip.  The kids had lots of fun exploring the Discovery Museum.  It is always so amazing to watch the excitement on all of their faces.  Below are some pictures that I was able to take to capture the fun!
    Your child will be coming home with a bright yellow paper tomorrow.  The paper is from the Acton Discovery Museum.  There is a survey for the kids to take about the field trip.  Upon completion of the survey, your child will receive a free admission pass to the museum!

Science

     We were able to set up our experiment outside on Monday to see the effects of wind on different objects.  After some rain and wind last week we were able to make some observations outside.  These observations prompted great discussion and more questions.  Many of the questions from our original experiment centered around the effect of rain on land.  

     On Friday we set up another experiment.  Our goal was to find out the effect of water on soil.  While we discussed how to set-up this experiment, one of the students brought up the idea of seeing the effect of different forces of water on soil as well as the effect of  the temperature of the water on soil.  The kids split up into two groups and collaborated to observe the effects of the force of water AND the temperature of water.  It was great to see such teamwork and complete curiosity!

      I am sure you have heard by now about the "Hudson Hawk" that decided to check out what we were doing on Friday morning!    If not, ask your child about his visit!

Reading Workshop

     We had a successful debate on Wednesday last week!  The kids did a really nice job stating their opinion about Maddie being caring or not caring.  Each group was respectful as they were listening to the point of view from the opposing side.  The kids also got to ask questions of the other side.  Ask your child his/her opinion about Maddie now.  

     I was able to tape the debate.  The file is really large, so I am not sure if I will be able to upload it.  I will try to do that this week and will let you know if I am successful!

I hope everyone has wonderful Thanksgiving!

~Jen

This Week in LL38.....

I hope everyone enjoyed the long weekend.  We are looking forward to our field trip later this week to the Acton Discovery Museum on Thursday.  If you haven't sent in your child's permission slip, please do so by tomorrow!

Reading Workshop
     Last week we took a closer look at one of the characters in the book that we are reading.  We started to think about Maddie in The Hundred Dresses.  The kids used evidence from the text to defend a position about whether or not Maddie is caring.  There were many kids that felt she is a caring character and a few that believed she is not caring.  We will have a debate this week.  Each side will get to share their opinion and back it up with evidence and reasons from the text.  We will practice having respectful conversations even if we don't agree with an opinion.  We will also work on having an open mind and be ready to listen to the other side.  In the end we will see if anyone has a different thought about this character.  Ask  your child what their position is on this and what makes them feel this way!  Make sure they keep you updated after our debate as well!

Science
    The ideas that we were thinking about last week was what effect does the wind have on sand, leaves, sticks, and dirt.  We began our investigation by thinking like a scientist.  We learned that scientists need to have a clear plan before heading out to find answers.  We really focused on observing and writing down our observations in our Science Notebook.

Math Workshop
     We are continuing to learn multiplication strategies.  The kids learned the area model and partial product strategies for multiplication.  When learning the area model we were able to think about what we know about area.  We were able to apply this to these multiplication problems.  Later in the week we learned about the partial product strategy.

This is the area model.

I hope everyone has a great week!

~Jen
  

I hope everyone enjoyed the weekend!  It is crazy to think that we are already in November.  It is going to be a crazy week with 2 days off.

Writing Workshop
     In writing workshop we have been working on categorizing.  We tried categorizing the items in my son's trick or treating bag.  The kids needed to look at the items in the bag and try to come up with ways to categorize or group the items.  We talked about how we knew where each item belonged.  We then discussed how all of these items fit into the larger category of the trick or treat bag.


      We did this with other groups of items last week as well.  This activity helped us a lot in writer's workshop.  We are doing the same work of categorizing in literary essay writing as we did with the candy.  Instead of using items we used evidence from a book.  All of the evidence needed to fall under a thesis or opinion about a book.  Ask your child what their thesis is and how they categorized the evidence.  
      For our first try at writing literary essays we are working with partners to go through the process.  After writing an essay together, we will take what we have learned to write a literary essay independently!

Math Workshop

     We started to learn about multiplying by multiples of 10.  I know that when I learned this type of multiplying I learned the "trick" for multiplying by 10.  For example, I learned 3 x 100 was 3 x 1 and "add" 2 zeroes.  When your child learned this skill, they used a place value chart to see that the 3 was getting 10 times bigger and then another 10 times bigger.  We did a lot of practice with this and many of the kids did come to realize the pattern was "adding on" the zeroes.  They were able to show that they understood why this pattern happened however.
     In fourth grade your child will not formally be taught the standard algorithm for multiplication or division.  It is not a common core standard for fourth grade, however, many children have seen this strategy.  We have talked in class that the standard algorithm would be a great way to check work for accuracy, but it won't be taught in fourth grade.  Again, the hope is that the children will have a good foundation and true understanding of  how to multiply larger numbers and next year will see why the standard algorithm actually works.

Menu Math Projects....
     A lot of creative projects came in once again. It was great to see the creativity showing what they know about the metric system.  It was also fun to see that some students chose the activity for finding the error on the math problem.
     Just a reminder the math menu project is due THURSDAY this week since we don't have school on Friday!

Science

     There was a lot of excitement on Monday when we went for a "field trip" around our school looking for examples of tree root wedging.  We did end up finding a great example out in the back of the school near the back parking lot.  Some kids have brought in or sent pictures of tree root wedging that they have found out in the "real world!"  Keep them coming!  

      I went for a hike on Saturday and found many example of tree root wedging to share with the kids tomorrow!  It certainly made my hike more exciting!

      Although we didn't find a ton of example of tree root wedging, we did find some really interesting things on the playground.  Below a tree branch grew around the fencing.  The kids were fascinated by this!  

    

Just a reminder, please send in the permission slip for our field trip to the Acton Discovery Museum in by Wednesday.  Our class is going on Thursday, November 17th.  

Also, we do not have school on Tuesday and Friday this week!  

Have a great week!  

~Jen