Coming Up this Week....

We had a great start to 2016!  The kids did a great job readjusting to the routine of our classroom.  

OLW

Last week the kids worked on creating One Little Word (OLW) for themselves to work on for this year in place of a New Year's Resolution.  OLW  is just that, one word that a person has as their "focus" for the year.  The kids needed to reflect on some goals that they want to achieve in 2016.  Then they were able to look at a list of words that might work.  Based off of this list, each student chose a word.  They needed to think about why they chose the word that they did and how they were going to "live" this word throughout 2016!  

On Friday, Mrs. Provost and Ms. Scanlon joined us as we all shared our words.  It was really neat to see how each student shared their word and how honest and brave the kids were to share why they chose the word that they did.  

Ask your child about their ONE LITTLE WORD!  We made signs for our desk in school and to hang on the board in the hallway, but the students could also make one for home to help them stay on track at home as well.   


Reading Workshop

We had a lot of fun using Wonderopolis last week in school.  The kids were able to find out about topics that they might not have even realized they were interested in.  They also got to browse through our nonfiction books to find books of interest.  

We have talked in class about how the kids really need to be reading nonfiction books in reading and RTI so that they can work on practicing the strategies that they are learning in school.  I know that many of the kids got new books for Christmas, so I explained that if they want to read/continue to read fiction at home that is okay.  Reading nonfiction at home would be great as well, since this would help to reinforce what we are working on in school.  

We focused on text features last week as well.  We talked about how text features help us to understand the text.    Here is an example of some of the text features that we focus on.  

  

In fourth grade it is also important to really dive in and see what we notice from certain text features such as maps, charts, timelines, and graphs.  We need to be able to ask ourselves what extra information does this give me and what can I do with this new information so that I can apply it to my learning.

Math Workshop

We will be starting our new unit on Geometry this week.  The kids took an assessment for Module 3 on Friday.  Please be on the lookout for this assessment this week.  It will give you valuable information about how you can help your child to review concepts that were difficult.

Just a reminder that Wednesday is a 1/2 day this week.  Have a great week!

~Jen