Hello 4th grade parents!
We are so excited to share our first blog “newsletter”! We hope that you will check in often to
see what is going on in our classrooms and to note important dates and events.
Our 4th grade parent blog newsletter will also contain images and
videos of special events we celebrate as a grade. Please feel free to leave
comments on our posts, bookmark us, and add us to your RSS feeds... if you know
what that means.
Our units are in full swing! Take a look below to see what we’re working on:
Mathematics
The launch of Investigations
is underway. Factors, Multiples, and
Arrays, our first unit, contains three investigations sequenced to build a
deep understanding of multiplication concepts. Your children will practice
strategies that will build multiplication fact fluency while instilling
flexibility in application. By manipulating visual models of multiplication,
memorized multiplication facts make “more sense.” By breaking apart two-digit
problems into familiar and comfortable “combinations,” students at a range of
levels can utilize the same strategy and increase their confidence while building
their number sense and knowledge of place value. This unit is the groundwork of
several units focusing on multiplication. Investigations
is a program that stresses strategic mathematical thinking. We learn so much
from seeing your child’s work on the page. If your child is struggling with a
homework sheet, please have him or her show all that they know on the page so
we can best support them. If your mathematician would like an additional
challenge, please have him or her “extend” the problems by showing multiple
strategies and writing about what strategy is most efficient for solving the
problem and why. Please also be on the look out for optional problem solving sheets for an additional challenge.
Reading
Our first unit is Building
a Reading Life. This unit lays the foundation of good habits required to
succeed in 4th grade Reading Workshop’s genre studies. Children become familiar with choosing
books “just right” for them, learn strategies to increase their stamina, and begin
to craft quality writing about their reading. It is so important that students
read daily in a spot with minimal distractions. Make sure to check in with your
child’s reading log nightly. An accurate log reveals much about a reader and we
learn a lot from the patterns we see on their reading logs. Although we
encourage as much independent reading as possible, children are required to
read 30 minutes everyday on their reading level. Mastering a reading level
requires specific skills. To ensure rich reading, we ask you support us in
making sure your child reads on their level as much as possible. During this
unit, children should begin to use their reading response notebook as reading
partner, using it reflect on their understanding of their books, to track their
active reading. The more reading success your child has, the more prepared they
will be to conquer the 3-day ELA exam in March.
Writing
Our 4th grade writing cycle gives children time
to collect, choose, draft, revise, and edit for grammar/conventions. We are
amidst our first unit, Personal Narrative.
In this familiar unit, children will begin to broaden their writers’ craft to
develop meaningful pieces of writing focusing in on a small moment of their
lives. It has been wonderful to read all of the rich experiences your children
are using in their writing. Building upon the strategies they gained in third
grade, children will begin to move through the writing cycle openly, revising
their draft multiple times to push their writing to a higher level. We hope to
build thoughtful, flexible writers who use a variety of deliberate detail in
their writing that contribute to its meaning. It is our hope that children
begin to develop their toolkit for better writing and build the writing stamina
necessary to have success in future writing units, as well as weekly extended
reading responses and day 3 of the ELA exam.
Social Studies
4th grade social studies focuses on the history
of the peoples who settled in the New World, the development of our New Nation,
and the peoples who helped expand the United States of America. We hope to
utilize our units in social studies to help instill solid research skills and
lay the foundation of informational reading and writing early on. This will
help better ensure success in future writing units and the ELA state exam. The
4th grade is very excited to begin our first social studies unit: The U.S. Constitution/Presidential Election.
The unit will explore the organization of our government, previewing the values
of our nation. We will connect this work with the great teaching opportunity of
the upcoming presidential election. Children will learn about how a citizen
becomes a candidate and how a candidate becomes a president.
