4th Grade Curriculum Updates: February 2008

We hope everyone had a wonderful President’s Week.

DATES TO NOTE:
Thursday, February 28 6:00 pm Community Meeting Math Information Night
Elysha will be presenting with Fran about POM and problem solving at the CLC. We hope you can make it. Learners are welcome to attend.

Tuesday, March 4 STAR Writing Test
Please make sure that your learner is on time for school that day. It’s only a one day assessment.

Monday, March 24 – Wednesday, March 26, CODS Gold Rush Overnight

UPDATE:
Here’s a peek at what we’ve been working on and what’s coming up in our classroom.

LA
We ended a round of book groups facilitated by Patti, Sandee, Jacqui, Laurel and Emma right before our break. Thanks, ladies! The learners had weekly assignments and meetings and after the books were finished, each group worked together to create an informational poster that included historical background, vocabulary discussed during the reading, a description of the narrator and his/her point of view in the story, and other literary elements. We are working on informational writing in Writer’s Workshop. Minilessons have included finding important facts and phrases and avoiding copying words and organizing work chronologically. We’ve critiqued sample student summaries and we’re currently using an article on Fort Ross to practice writing summaries in groups and independently. Learners will be choosing articles and writing summaries in the next couple of weeks.
Kim Holl, our school Reading Specialist, will be running a word work/reading seminar with the fourth graders. Learners will work with Kim in small groups on Tuesday mornings. In Kim’s words, “Students at this level need to learn to visually take words apart and put them back together quickly. We will be starting with single syllables and moving very quickly into longer multisyllabic words. This process is about pronunciation, not word meanings. We will be working on these skills in isolation first,. Later they will have the opportunities to put it together in context.” Learners continue to work on word roots and affixes meanings and other skills that dovetail with this work.

Math
Learners have been working on problem solving through practice MARS tasks. We are helping them to prepare for the MARS testing that will be taking place next week. We have also been working on decimals, percents, and fractions and their relationship to one another. We’ve used 100 grids to create designs and then label the percent and fraction shaded. In the next few weeks we will begin to order and compare fractions on a number line. We will look at how to reduce and simplify fractions through “peanut buttering” (stay tuned for more details about exactly what this is) and will explore equivalent fractions. We be concurrently introducing and working on geometry as we continue work on decimals and fractions.

Social Studies
We have been exploring settlers in the 1800’s. Californios, the Donnor Party, the Russians, Alaskans, Kashaya, and Coast Miwok of Fort Ross, are some of the people we have looked at through discussions, informational articles and reading historical fiction as book groups and as read alouds We are sending a message in a bottle, hoping for the bottle to time travel and reach a very special Commandant at a certain Russian settlement. We hope he can make it so that we can interview him about life at Fort Ross. We are moving into the Bear Flag Revolt and the Gold Rush as we prepare to be miners of the past.

Coloma Overnight
We will be ready to go by 7am, Monday, March 24. We will be returning sometime between 2:30 and 3:30 (est.) on Wednesday, March 26. Please read over your yellow handbooks with your learners, if you haven’t already done so. Remember that there is a DVD available to borrow that shows every detail of the trip if you are interested or think that your child may be feeling nervous and may feel more secure seeing what will happen. A question that came up in class more than once when going over the handbook was in regards to bringing a stuffed animal or blanket. Toys are not allowed, but if you know that your learner will be comforted and is very used to a sleeping “item”, they can bring it. Please remind them that these items should be for sleeping and not playing purposes during the trip. There is limited car space for packing, so please keep that in mind. This field trip does require a detailed medical form. It should have come home with the handbook. Please return them as soon as you can. You can return them in the envelope in my folder, or your child can return it to me directly. (I will have some school approved first aid items with me for scrapes btw.) Direct all questions about this trip to Lale.

FAB
This is the last week of some “FAB”ulous enrichment classes. We want to thank Emma (again), Lucia Sanchez, Sonya Sigler, and Sharon Collier, for providing these experiences for this round. After next week’s LAB break, the learners will switch groups and experience different activities.

LAB
Our scientists will be exploring rocks and minerals starting next week. We will make connections to Social Studies as we explore the Gold Rush. More information will come shortly.

Learner Updates
Don’t hear it only from us! We regularly post updates from learners about fourth grade happenings. You can check it out on our website. Here’s the direct link

http://v3.scclc.net/class_4/default.aspx

It can also be accessed through our class homepage if you click on learner updates.

Thanks for reading!

Lale and Elysha