We have been busy as bees here in 4-3! Speaking of bees have you heard about our class read aloud, A Handful of Stars by Cynthia Lord? Please ask your students all about Mason Bees. They are the bees that pollinate blueberry plants. Here is a photo that one of our classmates shared with the class. Mason Bees are BLUE!!
The story is set in Maine and it is a perfect read aloud to start the year with because it touches on so many important themes as we build our classroom community. It also allows me to model a text to text connection with a mentor text in our Schoolwide Literacy curriculum about a family that are migrant farm workers. Just this morning we worked on making inferences about the big idea or main idea from a text. I modeled with a non-fiction article about a bubble scientist(See Youtube video below!!) and the students practiced when it was read-aloud time with A Handful of Stars. They were able to recognize several "big ideas," including friendship, blending of cultures, family, change, bravery, and growing as a person. It was truly an A-HA moment for students as they realized the author had blended all of these themes into this one story. They were so motivated to use evidence from the text to discuss how those ideas "show up" in the story. It was truly amazing to see their faces light up with the realization that the story is teaching us a lot along the way about ourselves and the world, while telling a heart touching story of a girl and her dog.
I think the students are really enjoying reading workshop and I am enjoying getting to know them as readers. I had release time this week to continue to read individually with each student and learn about their reading strengths and areas of need. This will help me when I conference with each of them about their goals in literacy for the 1st trimester next week. I asked students to talk with you about their ideas for reading goals and ask for input from you.
Please be sure they are reading at a minimum of 20 minutes/night or 140 minutes a week...however you choose to break it up with family and sports schedules.
In Math we just completed Unit 1 covering Geometry concepts. The unit assessment will come home along with the RSA (Recognizing Student Achievement) work. As mentioned in the Curriculum Night presentation each unit assessment will be counted as 100 points and RSA work is the students' daily work grade and only count as the point values indicated on the students' score(s).
The assessments will be coming home this weekend. After reviewing the assessment with your child, please return them to school. We pre-tested for Unit 2 and will begin that unit on Monday.
Also timed fact tests started today. We will review addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Please be sure that students are practicing their facts nightly. Please see the Resources page on this website for links to great on-line resources to practice facts.
Students have organized a writing notebook and work on writing both during literacy and WEX (Writer's Express) lessons. There are three sections in our writer's notebooks: GRAMMAR, Writing Journal, and WEX. We have covered/reviewed subjects, predicates (both complete and simple), nouns, and verbs. Ask your student to tell you about articles and conjunctions, we have learned about these parts of speech as well! They are labeling sentences and taking notes. They LOVE taking notes on Grammar... really I am not making that up! Each Friday they are assessed on their understanding of the grammar concepts by completing the Friday sentence independently. Our first grammar assessment came home this week. Hopefully students shared it with you. We have started WEX and also have written in our writing journals about something close to our hearts! Word study will start next week.
Social Studies has consisted of reviewing map skills, continents, and oceans and learning about land forms. We have used an amazing resource called Nearpod that allows us to complete interactive lessons using the mini-Ipads. Students are able to view videos, read and respond to the curricular material presented individually and as a whole class. The program even allows for VIRTUAL FIELD TRIPS. We took one to the Grand Canyon....hope your students shared about that too! If not please ask them about the photo shared below.
Students are also using flexible time in our LMC computer lab to complete a Google world tour. These tours visit a different landform on each continent ad will be posted to their KidBlogs on the LMC website. Look for these soon! Flashcards will be coming home and a study guide to help them prepare for a unit assessment on map skills and landforms. The assessment will be next Friday, September 30th.
That's all for now...again, thank you for your continued support and partnership in your child's learning!
That's all for now...again, thank you for your continued support and partnership in your child's learning!