Hello families,
It's hard to believe we're already at the last week of this school year. Know that your support has made this wild ride into a fabulous year for our almost 5th graders and we're grateful for the time to work with your kiddos. This last week's schedule will be a little different because we're completing a video project that integrates our subjects. As always, the schedule with links will be in BLEND for our zoomies. A few other details to consider this last week:
We will relax our last day together with some games and a movie. Please see email sent earlier for details! Best, Jen and Jewellyn
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It’s our last full week together! While the school year is winding down, we are continuing to work hard and to make the most of every moment!
Readers will be exploring the nonfiction strategy of Sketch Noting and working with poetry! As an integrated unit, they will be creating small vignettes - describing a specific scene with a character of their creation. They will hone their ability to show their reader what is happening in and around their character. We will also be exploring more by way of vocabulary to provide a large base of specific word choices they can use in their pieces. Mathematicians will review a variety of math concepts through games this week. We’ll build our number sense, develop our mental math skills, and have a lot of fun while learning. This week will also be our last Fraction Friday, so we’ll make the most of it with some fractions on a number line. Know that most of our math games only require paper, pencil, and dice or a deck of cards so ask your 4th grader about what games they learn this week that could be good review opportunities all summer long. We’re launching to the moon during our last week of science! We’ll explore the terrain, meet some space experts, and consider why the moon is so important to our home planet. Through Minecraft Education and NASA, we’ll design lunar base camps and lunar terrain vehicles. It’ll be a fun week of STEM and creativity! Whew! Last week flew!
The 4th grade TEAM worked so hard on their STAAR assessments and in BLEND. We are celebrating how they have grown in terms of turning things in ON TIME and ensuring it is quality work. They continue to use the checklists, to dos, and feedback in important ways. This week readers will be embarking on a new journey with a classroom Linda Su Park has penned. They are asked what ONE thing -- no qualifications on size -- they would save if they had to escape a fire in their home. Each character’s item gives us a glimpse into what they value and who they are...it will be exciting to infer that together. Writers will be creating expositories to give incoming fourth graders a glimpse into their year. Looking back at highlights and examples of things they have done gives them a chance to review and solidify their learning as well as show them how far they have come. Mathematicians are building their persistence muscles and remembering that math is open, creative, and visual. We’re solving a series of problems to review big concepts that will help us to enter 5th grade as confident mathematicians. Last week we worked with division and pattern seeking. This week we’ll continue to look for patterns as we review decimal concepts. We’ll start by relating decimals to prices and then use models and division to explore unit prices. We’ll end the week by building decimal equations and proving their accuracy visually. In social studies, we will be exploring types of study, research, and critical thinking. We will be doing inference and point of view with primary source artifacts from The Bob Bullock, and we will have the opportunity in small groups to use our historian knowledge to escape a virtual room! First off, thank you so much for the showering of cards, gifts, and words of appreciation last week. We enjoyed a fabulous lunch from Torchy’s and have a beautiful orchid plant to nurture which will remind us of your sweet kiddos each time we see it.
This week we have the opportunity to show what we have learned via the STAAR test. This will be the first time we’ve taken it online too. We know there are some nerves, but we’ve also told them that that’s NORMAL. They are gearing up! Get good rest the next few days, and fuel them with a good breakfast. Having them here on time is important...when they are feeling rushed, that’s not an easy start to the task. Send some snacks that are easily accessible and disposable as well as a full water bottle. We should be done before lunch, so kids can get lunch from the cafe or bring as usual. Looking forward to a great week! At least we hope...that rain was refreshing last week!
This week Team 4th grade is finishing our class novel, Eleven, by Tom Rogers. We have learned so much from our character Alex about taking responsibility, owning mistakes, and experiencing hard times. We’ve also LOVED the way Tom has crafted this book. We know that everything (every word, punctuation mark, and how he constructs each sentence) is ON PURPOSE. As readers, we are learning to pause, talk about the craft, and think about each part. We are learning to do that in our own independent reading, and it’s deepening our comprehension! Writers are exploring more work with Jason Reynolds. As the Library of Congress’ Literacy Ambassador this year, he’s provided new ways to think about writing and new topics. We have the opportunity to choose a genre to write...and our audience. This week we will spend time reviewing for next week’s STAAR tests. We know that practice builds confidence and comfort with format, so we are carving this week to do just that. Students will have opportunities to make informative mistakes with this practice and ask questions. We’re also pausing to celebrate how far we’ve come across a wide variety of math topics this year. Each day this week we’ll review concepts, vocabulary, and strategies. We’ll look back through our notebooks as a resource and remember when we first learned each concept. Reviewing is an active process so we’ll think about effective study strategies and action steps too. 4th grade scientists will learn about structural and behavioral animal adaptations this week. They’ll virtually explore the fabulous San Diego Zoo and will create a slide deck about an animal of their choice. Through the week, they’ll have time to revise and edit. We’ll share and learn from each other’s expertise next week! Happy Monday!
We are happy to have another full week together at BCE! We are moving closer and closer to the end of the year, but we are determined to FINISH STRONG! We want to celebrate things we are noticing...first off, these kids are INHALING books! They are keeping both teachers busy recommending and selecting books for them. We hope you are hearing more about the characters they’re meeting, and the journeys they are following. We also want to share the joy that their laughter brings as they now have known each other for several months. We watch how they look for each other each day and enjoy chatting...whether in breakout rooms or in large groups. Readers will continue to follow Alex and The Man in the White Shirt through September 11th. We are keeping an eye on our reading and making inferences and forming theories along the way. We are also stopping to savor beautiful lines of writing...it’s fun to hear them say, “THAT’S A SIMILE!” and know how it’s being used. Writers will explore some different types of writing with the Library of Congress Ambassador for the year, Jason Reynolds. His inspiration stretches us to explore different genres and styles of writing. Historians started the week on Zoom with a docent from the Bob Bullock Museum who helped us explore Texas History during the US Civil War. We will examine several primary sources to gather a deeper understanding of that time period. Mathematicians are wrapping measurement with a scavenger hunt and an asynchronous Kahoot. You and your 4th grader are welcome to play a round of Kahoot while reviewing together anytime this week. We’re also talking about the importance of financial literacy as one of the most important ways we apply math concepts. We’ll classify fixed and variable expenses, learn how to calculate profit, and consider the purpose of financial institutions. Our morning meetings last week helped us consider the importance of conflict management skills. We reviewed building blocks like assertiveness, calming strategies, and empathy. We shared a helpful strategy for talking through a conflict using an acronym called OUT. The O stands for “owning your choices”. The U stands for “understanding the other person’s perspective”. The T stands for “telling what you’ll do differently next time”. This strategy has proven effective for conflicts of all sizes at school and may prove to be a useful tool at your house, too.
Writers will draft a narrative this week about a time they learned something. We will be meeting in our small group time with other writers to ensure our work is clear to another reader. Having that audience also keeps us accountable for our grammar and conventions! In reading we continue to follow our character Alex through the morning of September 11, 2001. We have also met another important character, The Man in the White Shirt...and we are forming theories about how they are connected. Wordsmiths will be exploring plurals, homonyms, and another greek root word. 4th grade mathematicians are becoming experts in area and perimeter. We know that area refers to the space inside of a 2-D space and that we can use square units to help measure the space. To calculate efficiently, we can use formulas like l x w = a. For perimeter, we’ve found several formulas that can help us to calculate efficiently and we also know that visual strategies like drawing a diagram continue to be a helpful strategy. This week we’re looking closely at units of length that help us to measure perimeter and area. We’re exploring customary and metric units with the goal of understanding relative size and being able to convert between units using multiplication and division. As scientists, we’re making lots of connections with the metric system. We’ve had thoughtful discussions about why scientists use the metric or SI system worldwide and the importance of converting accurately. We’re also completing our study of plants this week by exploring soil. We’ll make more real-world connections with measurement units that help us understand the plants, animals, and places around us with some amazing nonfiction read alouds this week. It’s a wonderful week to celebrate our amazing planet Earth! This week readers will embark on a new journey. We will meet Alex, in Tom Rogers’ book, Eleven. We know this book will spark lots of discussion! In writing, we will pen a new expository piece that explains a place we’d like to visit. Our word work continues to dive deeper into vocabulary meaning and how to words we don’t know.
Historians will continue to explore Texas history. We will examine the early 1800’s: from the Republic to Statehood in 1845. We will discover (and it will probably surprise them) that the road wasn’t always smooth, nor did all inhabitants want to become part of the United States. Mathematicians finished with geometry last Friday and many found a new favorite type of math through our work with angles. It’s been exciting to look at the world around us and notice lines and angles, then have the vocabulary to describe them mathematically! This week we’ll continue thinking about how numbers can help quantity the spaces around us as we review area and perimeter. We’ll develop formulas for calculating area and perimeter of squares and rectangles. We’ll also solve a series of puzzles that will help us think deeply about the similarities and differences between these two concepts. This week we kick off our school wide fundraiser, DanceFit. Be on the lookout for daily emails and updates! We have jumped into April with both feet!
Tomorrow the kids will not have regular scheduling. The STAAR testing will take the morning, and then we will want everyone to Zoom together at 2:20 for WOW and our class cheer. This week readers are analyzing poetry and reviewing poetry annotations. We know they are already clamoring to dive into a new novel, but we need to pause and savor what we just read. Students have now dipped their toes into the real power of reading -- it changes you. You put the book down physically, but emotionally and mentally that book is a PART OF YOU now. It’s been touching to see them respond to this book. They are developing reading muscles AND empathy. That’s not comfortable...some of the things we read were not easy to hear or think about. Salva experienced some big scary things. But that’s the amazing thing. Your children saw outside their lives and into the lives of others...and were moved. Kids can handle big topics, especially if they know that someone else is in need because of a problem. They wouldn’t have wanted me to water it down and make it more palatable. Let’s celebrate how they are seeing the world in a different way. Let ‘s encourage them to wrestle with things and question. Again, they are craving the next book...that means something. Writers will be exploring how we can write poems too. Your children are learning that writing is a craft with many different forms. It’s exciting to explore them, not as a task, but as a way we can choose to express ourselves, our thoughts, and our feelings. We will also learn some new strategies for vocabulary in word work. Good readers stop when they encounter words they don’t know and work to get at the meaning. Unlocking those words is key to deeper comprehension. Our mathematicians have been hard at work exploring geometry concepts. We saw how angles are measures of turn and learned that circles have 360 degrees. We’ve learned about benchmark angles like 90 degrees and 180 degrees, which are important numbers to help us solve unknown values in angle puzzles. We also know how to use a protractor to measure angles more precisely. This next week we’ll apply some of our understanding of lines and angles to polygons like trapezoids and rectangles. In science, we’re enjoying the spring and noticing all of the bluebonnets around central Texas as we move into life science. We’ll review the differences between living and nonliving organisms, then move into a short study of plants as a system with interdependent structures that function as a whole. It’s time for a little field science, so don’t be surprised if your 4th grader requests a magnifying glass or heads outside to compare leaf structures. We’ll be botanists at work! This week, readers will finish following Salva and Nya’s journeys in A Long Walk to Water. We have learned to summarize, predict, and infer along the way. It’s been exciting to hear readers asking about our next book already too! They’ve caught the reading bug. Encourage them to continue applying the strategies of pausing, following the character, and summarizing as you ask them about their independent reading books.
Writers are rounding the corner on next week’s STAAR writing test. We have been reviewing and applying our knowledge of all things grammar and expository writing. They are ready! We’ll be finishing up our review by talking through expectations on testing day this week. We started building geometry vocabulary with some kinesthetic activities on Friday. Students showed lines, rays, points, and more using their arms. Multisensory learning is so helpful to help our brains remember content for longer periods of time. This week we’ll classify angles as acute, right, obtuse, or straight. Then we’ll use protractors as tools to measure angles more precisely. At home, you can ask your student to identify parallel and perpendicular lines in the world around them, show acute/obtuse/right angles with their arms, and explain why protractors include number lines to measure angles. In social studies, we will examine the events of the Texas Revolution. From the Battle of Gonzales to the Treaty of Velasco...we will cover the important battles that brought us to annexation as a state. Knowing the pieces of our history is essential to appreciating and understanding the now...and sparks curiosity as to why things are how they are. Remember we have a student holiday on Friday - the week is going to move quickly! |
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