Sunday, October 9, 2016

This Week in LL38.....

I hope everyone has been enjoying the long weekend!  Just a reminder that we don't have school tomorrow or Tuesday.  

Last week you should have received a link to sign up for conferences.  Conferences are being held next week on Wednesday, October 19th and Thursday, October 20th.  I have attached the link here as well.  


Parent Teacher Conference Link

I will also be sending home a questionnaire for you to fill out and send back with your child to help me prepare for your child's conference.  Please feel free to send me your answers via email or send the paper back to school with your child.


Math Workshop

We worked on adding and subtracting larger numbers last week in math.  We also created tape diagrams when we were completing these problems.  Tape diagrams are a way to represent the information we know and the information we need to find.  Here is an example of a tape diagram:

                                                            Image result for tape diagram example
This way of representing our thinking will also help us as we start to solve multi-step word problems.  We will be able to use tape diagrams to determine what we know and what we need to solve for.  

We have been spending a lot of time subtracting numbers where we need to borrow across zeroes.  This can be tricky for many kids.  Here is a worksheet that you could use to help reinforce these skills with your child at home.  



Math Menu Side Dish Projects

I was very impressed by the game boards, math tests, and comparing statistics projects that came in on Friday. Friday afternoon the kids spent some time sharing (and playing) the projects with a partner.  We will certainly spend more time playing the games that were brought in over the next few weeks!  










Reading Workshop

We started our Making Inferences unit in reading.  We spent some time watching short videos that didn't have words.  The kids learned how they made inferences constantly even though the characters didn't speak.  Ask your child to explain what they need to do to make an inference!

Here is one of the videos that we watched:


We also started to think about external traits and internal traits.  The internal traits of characters are called character traits.  We started working on a Character Traits book in school.  The book has several character traits that we come across in many of the books we read in fourth grade.  We started learning about the following character traits last week: compassionate, inconsiderate, independent.  It would be helpful to point these words out when you notice examples of these in people in your everyday life.  We will continue to add to our character trait vocabulary over the next few weeks.

Writing Workshop

We started a new unit in writing workshop as well.  It is our Literary Essay unit.  We started by reading a very powerful book called Fox by Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks.  We are rereading the text closely by stopping to push our thinking about certain words or sentences in the book.  This deep thinking will eventually lead us to creating thoughtful opinions about books that we are reading.

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of the weekend!

~Jen



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