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.
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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! |
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