Week of 4.4 - 4.8

Hello families!  We had a very smooth week back from break.  I often forget to write about book buddies, but today I've remembered.  We visit our book buddies in kindergarten and first grade on Tuesday afternoons.  This week I sat and observed our kids with the little ones and it made me appreciate, yet again, how awesome my class is.  Each of my kids treats their book buddies with such kindness.  Funny enough, they have all sorts of 'problems' with their buddies.  Some buddies don't have books.  Others have the same books every week.  Still others will pick up a different book WHILE our kids are reading the first book to them... (I haven't had the heart to say "welcome to my world" yet.) Ask your kids about their adventures.  They are gentle and patient and they model good behavior; it's so awesome to see. 

Dr. Cortez, who also happens to be a Whittier parent, visited our class on Thursday as part of the Global Village partnership.  He gave us an awesome presentation about the nervous system (including a photo of a brain during surgery!).  We're happy to have him for a few more visits!

Reading:   We finished "The Night Journey" in our Open Court books and the kids took a comprehension test.  This story was great for modeling reading strategies such as using a dictionary and drawing a character map.  We needed a family tree to help us keep the characters straight, and a dictionary for the many, many words we didn't know!

4th Grade Math:  Unit 7 is about fractions, data and probability.  The students continued to practice identifying and naming fractions using pattern blocks this week.  The blocks helped them learn about equivalent fractions (2/3 is equal to 4/6).  They also started adding and subtracting fractions.  Please help your child continue to practice his/ her multiplication facts.  We see them over and over again in multiplication, division, angles, and now fractions.  The better they know them, the easier these new concepts will be.  A few minutes a night of running through the multiplication table helps tremendously.

Science:  We continued to test our airplanes this week.  We used flight logs to determine a standard flight (number of rubber band winds and distance) and a flight half the distance.  Then the kids brainstormed variables that could affect the flights and chose one to test.  They set up their experiments and a chart to record the information by themselves.  After break we'll take a look at the results.  Ask your child about the variable they tested, the results they measured, and how they did their experiment.  They came up with some cool stuff!

Writing:  The "6 + 1" traits that we teach are:  ideas, organization, word choice, voice, sentence fluency, conventions and presentation.  This cycle we will work on word choice and voice.  As a starter, we did an activity in which the kids revised a boring narrative about a teacher's pants ripping.  They could choose any perspective from which to retell the story and the results were quite funny.  Today the kids began drafting new pieces!

Miscellaneous:

This week and next week is TUNE-OUT TV week.  Check out the link below to find things to do around town instead of watching TV:  http://www.tvtuneoutweek.wordpress.com/.

This week's author: Elyse

Monday we got back from spring break! In Social Studies, we practiced taking notes like middle schoolers. Tuesday we did a FUN writing prompt about a teacher's pants ripping! Wednesday we did a really fun STAND and we got to listen to a song. Thursday in gym we did Dance Dance Revolution. Ethel did 17. She failed :( Dr. Cortez also visited us which was very cool. Friday in thh computer lab we got to go to Build Your Wild Self and make avatars and write about them. It was REALLY awesome!