As part of social-emotional learning this week, TEAM 4th grade will explore mindfulness. Morning messages will highlight the benefits of increased awareness in the present. These include improved attention and focus, improved self-management, and greater self-compassion. We’ll consider the difference between a mind full of past and future thoughts versus the practice of bringing awareness to what’s happening right now. Some of our favorite tools for this important work include mindful breathing and using your 5 senses to ground yourself in the present. If you’re interested in tools that you can use at home with your family, visit the AISD Mindfulness page.
We’re looking forward to meeting with you during your student’s upcoming conference. These important conversations are scheduled for the week after Thanksgiving during the afternoons. Know that science/social studies/health will be asynchronous that week so students and teachers can fully engage in conferences at home or at school. If you’d prefer that your student NOT attend, please let us know via email. All students are reflecting on their strengths and goals this week in small groups, so their perspective will still be at the center of our conversations. The end of our second 9 weeks is fast approaching and that means that many of your student’s BLEND assignment grades will be added into TEAMS and used for report card averages. Teachers have created a time each week to support students individually with asynchronous work completion and quality but is is challenging to support everyone remotely. Please create a time each day or each week to help your student check for any missing assignments in BLEND. Know that rubrics and checklists are included in many of our recurring assignments (CSERT, Match It, PODS). These tools empower students and clarify expectations for quality work. It’s exciting that so many students read teacher feedback carefully, then revise their work and resubmit. We are happy to raise grades until the 9 weeks end in mid-December. While assignments may say “LATE” in BLEND, that is so assignments populate appropriately in our gradebooks and BLEND “to do” lists. We welcome any questions, so please reach out via email if we can further clarify. Our 4th graders will explore complex sentence structures this week. We’ll talk about independent and dependent clauses, so you’ll probably hear the acronym AAAWWUUBIS. This is a handy reminder of the conjunctions that signal a dependent clause at the beginning of a sentence. As writers, we’ll put a comma to separate those clauses. We’ll also explore various perspectives on Thanksgiving as a national holiday and will revise/edit our 3rd piece of the year. Mathematicians are building fluency multiple times each week using a combination of efficient strategies that build number sense, daily application in small groups/minilessons, catchy songs, and kinesthetic tools. Our goal is to know all of our multiples up to 12x12 with accuracy and efficiency. With all of our multi digit multiplication work, we know that fluency with facts makes the big work of multi digit calculating much easier. This week we’ll work on those multiples of 9. We’ll also continue to deepen our understanding of division by reviewing the various modeling strategies we’ve used so far and extending these to bigger numbers. We’re hearing from students that it’s exciting to be able to divide using a missing side strategy. Long division will be the next step soon and we’ll be ready!
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