News for November 7

Dear 4B Families,

• Next Monday the 10th is our first field trip. Thank you in advance to Ms. Rose and Ms. Aurore for joining as chaperones. Please wear rugged clothing and flip flops. We will get extremely dirty on this trip, but this trip is real life in rural India and therefore a wonderful experience for all of us.

• The Halloween party was a huge success. Thank you Room Moms for your hard work in planning, and thank you to all who brought food and decorations!

• Tuesday the 18th of November from 9 to 10 AM is our first Writing Celebration of the year. The week prior to this event, students will work through a publishing unit, which basically means they take off their "writer's hat" and put on an "editor's hat" in order to take another look at past writing and improve it for mechanics before sharing out during the celebration. Please join us on November 18th so that we can celebrate essays, stories, literacy letters, summaries and reflections! The repertoire of writing genres that your children have been working on this early in the school year is truly amazing!

Here is a brief blurb about our current units of study:

For reading, we have launched our nonfiction unit by looking at the differences between fiction and nonfiction reading. During our unit, we will learn how to identify text types, such as descriptive nonfiction vs. compare and contrast nonfiction or cause and effect nonfiction. We will learn to read text features, such as fact boxes, timelines, charts, bold words, and the like. We will learn to list key ideas and find the main idea and supporting details as we read. We will synthesize information. Basically, we will learn how to learn from nonfiction!

For reading homework, students should continue reading fiction and stopping and jotting using a variety of strategies. See the Tally Sheet for ideas...

For writing, we are writing Response to Literature essays even though we have launched teaching points for nonfiction during reading workshop. Students are reading essay models before they write their own essays, but there is no corresponding essay reading unit. Normally, our reading and writing units are paired. 

After our Writing Celebration, we will begin pairing reading nonfiction with writing nonfiction. Students will write their own nonfiction book before winter break. After winter break, we will add text features to our book, such as a Table of Contents, a citations page, an About the Author page and the like.

For social studies, we are learning about life along the Ganges by looking at Haridwar, Varanasi, and the Ganga Delta in Bangladesh. Students are looking at both the geography of these places and the cultural ties to the river. Next week we will make a salt dough map of India!

Next, we will study the Himalayas and plate tectonics before we shift to a more in depth look at the people of South Asia with our class novel Rickshaw Girl.

For math, we have completed our summative assessment for place value and we are working on multi-digit multiplication and division, problem solving, and improving our fact fluency. Some new terms for students are as follows: prime vs. composite, factor vs. multiple, factor rainbows, factor pairs, factor lists, arrays, area models, and many more. Khan Academy "must" be used for place value and rounding skills as all 4B kids need to continue and reinforce what we have learned in class.

Regarding math homework from now until Winter Break, I am sending home a math packet for multiplication and division to any student who did not receive "Applying" for multiplication and division fluency on their report card. Students should complete one page 4 to 5 times per week. Online tools should still be used at Freerice.com or the Oswego website.

For students who are applying, using graph paper with this website below will allow students with strong fluency for multiplication and division to practice at their Just Right math level. I suggest selecting 5 addition, 5 subtraction, 5 multiplication, and 5 division problems to practice a few times each week. http://lizardpoint.com/math/index.php

Word Study homework has been added to the grade 4 homework plan. This will add about 10 to 15 minutes of homework time to Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

If you have any questions please email or book a Monday or Tuesday to visit with us from 3:35 to 4:15.

Cheers,

Ms. T and Ms. Deanna