Inquiry Cycle

Life Along the Ganges River

News for October 4

Dear Families:

MAP testing is over and your child's report will be available with his/her report card in early November. Remember that report cards no longer have grades. Instead they are developmental codes that inform if your child is beginning, developing, applying, or extending for a particular standard from the Common Core Standards. 

Children must show "evidence" of working without teacher support for most standards and for literacy this evidence comes from student Stop N Jots, literacy letters, running records reading assessments, and the like. 

Most of the report card standards are yearlong skills and a code of DV for trimester one means the child is on track. If you see NA, it means we have not taught the skill yet. 

There are students in 4B who are struggling to build habits that provide evidence for reading skills because they do not Stop N Jot or write a literacy letter that contain text details with their personal ideas. A code of "B" for beginning would be appropriate in this case. I will hold 3 way conferences between parents, teachers, and student if a student has a report card with many "B" codes and they are NOT an English Language Learner.

Here are brief blurbs about our current units of study

During Reading Workshop, on Monday the 6th many grade 4B students will begin their first Book Club. We are staggering book clubs so that some students can still have Guided Reading with a teacher, while others are doing Book Clubs, which are more independent. 

Book Club kids have reading homework every night and their Stop N Jots will help them to talk with their club members during the meeting. Students will have "Accountable Talk" sentence stem cards in their hands to help them as well. Ask your son or daughter to show you these cards. These sentence stems are a guide for parents too. "What can you infer about how ___ was feeling in that part of the story? Why? What is the text clue for that?"

During Writing Workshop, all 4B students have built a story arc: a narrative story built scene by scene with a beginning that introduces the characters and a small problem, a rising action that builds the problems, and a resolution that brings a sense of closure. Our teaching points have aimed to help 4B writers add dialogue, feelings, strong word choice, and time transitions that help us follow the story more easily. Please read your son or daughter's story and ask him or her: "What is the heart of your story?" 

We have noticed that many of these 4B stories send a message to have courage, to value friendship and family, to be kind to animals and the like. All beautiful hearts from big hearted kids that you have raised!!!

Social studies began with our National Identity poster making, and now we will begin a mapping activity using Google My Maps. This is a new Google tool that has a SHARE feature so that all of us can add to the map. We will explore Landforms using this tool! Fun!! 

For math, thank you to Ms. Rose, Ms. Janet, Ms. Marie-Pierre, and Ms. Aurore for running Math with Moms. You do not have to be a native speaker to join us on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the mornings. If you'd like to join, please email me. 

This week we made a big push into problem solving using the 5 point problem solving sheet. All students have 9 word problems that they will finish by this coming Wednesday. The first box seems to be the most difficult: Write an Answer Statement. Check out your son or daughter's problem solving booklet. 

These I can statements continue to be our focus:

I can recognize that in multi-digit whole number, a digit in one place represents ten times what it represents in the place to its right.

I can read and write larger whole numbers using numerals, words, and expanded form

I can compare two large numbers using symbols to show the comparison

I can round whole numbers to any place value

I can add and subtract large numbers and subtract across zeroes

I can use what I know about addition, subtraction, multiplication and division to solve multi-step word problems involving whole numbers

I can use different problem solving strategies to show how I solved a word problem

I can determine whether a given whole number up to 100 is a prime or composite number and explain my determination

I can solve for a variable

For math homework, ALL students have paper homework for the week of Oct. 6: Problem Solving and then a packet of place value practice skills.

Thanks for reading!

If you have any questions please email me us tbritt@aisch.org and ddeanna@aisch.org.

Ms. T and Ms. Deanna