This Week in LL38....

This is the visual that we use in the
classroom to think about main idea and details.
The details have to support the main idea
just like the legs of a stool!

Reading Workshop

     Last week we were talking about Important vs. Interesting information in a text.  Pairs of students were given either the Pacific Northwest region of the United States of the West region to become experts on.  We are learning about these two regions because they are the part of the country that has the most earthquakes.

     This week we will take our learning about important information and use it to determine the main idea and details in nonfiction texts.  This will help us to summarize texts as well.



Writing Workshop

     We are working on meeting our second draft "deadline" in writing.  The kids have been working on drafting their  second fictional narrative in writer's workshop.  They are working on going through the writing process more independently and using resources that they have and what they have learned and are trying to apply it to their second story.
     This week we will talk about revising and editing our work.  This will take a lot of thought and can be difficult for fourth graders.  It can be overwhelming to look at a story that they have written and think about fixing it, so we will talk about rereading with a "lens."  Rereading with a lens allows the kids to reread and just try to fix one particular area of their story.  For example they might just reread to find places to add dialogue or just reread for places to add similes.
     Our deadline for finishing our second draft will be this Friday.  The kids will start typing their final drafts next week in class.  This might become homework as well at the beginning of next week.

Math Workshop
     We started to move onto finding missing angles without a protractor last week in math.  Below is an example of what 4th graders are expected to do in this unit.  We have talked about being able to use all the information that we are given to determine the one missing part.  We will continue to practice this throughout this week as well.


                                                         

Valentine's Day
     I will be sending out a class list later this week that can be used for Valentine's Day cards.  We will exchange cards on Friday, February 12th.

* Just a reminder, it is the school's policy to not send in candy or food with your child to hand out to other students.

Book Order
    The deadline for Scholastic Book Orders was this past Friday.  I am extending the due date to this Tuesday, in case you wanted to purchase any books for your child!

I hope everyone has a great week!

~Jen