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