Reading: We had a lot of fun with Shiloh this week. We read a few chapters, learned quite a bit more about some of the characters, and got into some sticky situations with the main character, Marty. He has started lying to everyone about hiding Judd's dog, Shiloh, in order to protect Shiloh, but some of the lies are lies-by-omission. Today we had a "court case" using evidence from the text about whether or not Marty is guilty of lying. Talk to your kids about it this weekend- it's great practice in summarizing and using evidence from the text, as well a great conversation about morality and lying.
During reading workshop we talked about how reading is thinking. I've been modeling my thinking out loud as I read ("I wonder why... Next, I bet... It seems like... That's a cool sentence... What does that word mean..."). I've been explicitly talking about these strategies that I'm using and reminding them to use them in their own work. We're currently compiling a poster full of strategies that will go into their notebooks next week! Ask your kids what they think about when they read. Do they make connections to other parts of the story, their own lives, or other things they know about? Do they reread when they're confused?
Writing: This week we studied other authors to observe the strategies they use in their writing. We learned about types of beginnings and endings and how to develop the setting. We also reviewed a student-friendly checklist that matches the rubric I will use to grade their published work. Each of these strategies, as well as the checklist, is glued into the back of their writing notebook so that they can use them as they work. Ask your student if he/she is finished writing the first draft. Ask what plans he/she has to revise it to improve.
4th Grade Math: Our second unit was a very short unit! During the last two weeks we have learned all about the metric system. We have converted numbers in smaller and bigger units and solved word problems with those measurements. It was very helpful to have the place value understanding for the unit. Since there were only 5 lessons in our book ((students loved how thin it was), we took our final test today. On Monday (Halloween) we will play some fun review games and then we will move onto our next unit (this one is very long) which is multiplication and division. Ask your student how their test was today.
Social Studies: We have had some wonderful conversations about the election and the election process! The students are so engaged in this topic. This week we focused on learning about the history of voting rights and the electoral college. We discussed how the electoral college works and the different numbers of electoral college votes each state has in the United States. We also talked about the popular vote vs. electoral college votes. We discussed the 2000 election and how President Bush won the electoral college votes. Ask your student how the electoral college works and how the number of votes is decided.
Science: This week we continued studying soil components through our "Soil, Rocks, and Landforms" unit. There have been many different programs and half days during our science time so we were glad to get two days in this week! Our big question for the week was "How do weathered rocks pieces move from one place to another?" We became geologists and used stream tables for our experiment. We added a liter (this was a great connection to our measurement unit- we converted all the measurements as we talked) of water to the stream table to see what happened to the soil components. We learned that the clay moved farther than the sand. We also discussed erosion, deposition, canyons, valleys, and deltas. Ask your student why the clay moved further than the sand in our experiment.
Miscellaneous:
- If your child signed up for Trick or Treat for Unicef, don't forget to make a plan to get those donations!
- Do you follow us on Twitter? We post pictures of happenings in our room about once a week. @Leslie3weiss @MrsRoskos
- Your students have the opportunity to be a buddy in a special education pre-k gym class this year through the "Young Athletes" program. Every student in our room raised his hand to participate- an awesome opportunity for them! Today, our first group of 7 students helped out. Ask your kids about it.
- Class 303 was fantastic at our Hubbard Street assembly this week. They did a 20+ minute improv piece to some really intense music. Being a trained dancer, through my (Mrs. Roskos') eyes it was beautiful and fascinating to watch, but I was unsure how the students would do for so long. They were entranced! Ask them about the performance if they haven't told you already.
