This week in our classroom: In math we have been working with adding and comparing fractions and finding equivalent fractions. During number corner, we have continued finding the area in square units of different geometric shapes, and adding three quarters of a dollar at a time to find the final amount of money. We have also been working on multi-step division number problems. In Reading, we have been talking about how authors connect the beginning and the end of their stories, how the characters create contrast in the narrative, and how figurative and descriptive language makes the reading richer and more interesting. In writing, we have been organizing the sequence of our stories to have a clear picture of what we want to talk about. And in Science we have had a great surprise since Mystery Science videos are now completely in Spanish!!! We have been learning about whether a volcano could pop up in our back yard, and have found the volcanos in a World Map that make the Ring of Fire. During this week students have also been been taking the iReady test in both English Language Arts and Math, although we will need another day next week to get it finished. And finally we have celebrated kindness week with fun outfits and reading a bunch of books on kindness and good manners. Take a look at this week's slideshow. The kids are having a blast playing board games! Have a cozy snowy weekend! Hopefully nobody will lose power :)
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This week during Math, we have been learning a lot about fractions, like equivalent fractions, improper fractions and mixed numbers, adding fractions with the same denominator and with different denominator. We have played games and used manipulatives to see how many objects make a fraction of a group. During Spanish reading, we have been learning about the audience, understanding that authors think about the people that will be reading their books, and make sure their vocabulary and topics are appropriate for that audience. We have also learned about the sequence of the story, and how the author expresses their feelings in the voice of their characters. Since those are the same lessons that we are going to apply to our personal narrative writing, looking at what other authors are doing can guide us in our writing. In Writing we have been exploring how to stretch our narration, so that we don't reveal all the important information first, but start building up tension in the story to keep the attention of the reader. And on Science, we have started a new unit titled The Birth of Rocks, with an anchor phenomenon about an interesting fossil site in Nebraska. Finally, we have been decorating our door for Kindness Week with the message "Kindness is a Universal Language", and we will be doing the following activities next week: Kindness Spirit Week Monday, January 24 : Kicking off Kindness: Wear crazy socks or mismatched shoes Tuesday, January 25: “Be the Sunshine on Someone’s Cloudy Day” - Wear bright colors Wednesday, January 26: Hats off to kindness - Wear a hat to school Thursday, January 27: Team Kindness: Wear your favorite sport gear or school colors Friday, January 28: Dream” of Kindness - pajama day (Because it has been a while since my students had a reward for their behavior, I think this would be a good time to do something fun, so with the fourth grade teachers, we have decided to do a board game and bring your special snack day for the afternoon) Throughout the Kindness Challenge week of January 24 - 28 we will be collecting items for the Food Pantry, see the flyer here for more information. Take a look at this week's slideshow and at our Kindness Door. Have a great weekend! as aThis week during Math students have been introduced to fractions, dividing strips of papers, paper pizzas and dollars into different pieces and amounts to share. Then, for the most part, we have been working on finishing up the informational pieces, and participating in a fun engineering project. During this STEM project, the students had to build a structure resembling a Holiday Tree, using gum drops and toothpicks. Let's say that the hardest part of the project was resisting the urge to eat the gumdrops :). On Wednesday the students brought in their Party in a Box boxes and voted for the most creative and the most colorful, and picked a number that corresponded to the number of the gift they would get. A lot of creativity and cheer was shared this day. We were also visited by the Nipmuc Jazz Band and Chorus that entertained us with a beautiful performance of Christmas songs, and finally today, our fourth graders are getting the chance to be the ones on the "stage" (separated three feet apart in the gym floor) and perform for the rest of the school, one grade at a time. Also this week we've had a special visitor, my Goddaughter Emma is studying in a boarding school in Woodstock, Connecticut, as an exchange students, and is spending the Christmas break with us. She is a sophomore there and her holiday break started this week already, so she has come with me to school to help out in the class. Needless to say that my students have flocked to her! She has been of great help this week and I am happy that my students have been able to speak in Spanish with her. Elba has also been able to return this week as well! I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for being so kind, generous and supportive. I absolutely adore all the generous and thoughtful gifts I have received. Thank you so much, you are so kind! Take a look a this week's slideshow. Have a great holiday break and enjoy some rest and relaxation. See you in 2022! This week in Math we have continued investigating remainders, and reviewed how to handle those remainders, and what are the division strategies that we have used. Students have also played the games "More or Less Multiplication", where they had to multiply three digits using the associative property, and "Remainders Win" to practice finding the remainders . On Thursday the students have been working on a pre-assessment of the unit and today we have reviewed that pre-assessment to reflect on the challenges and successes of our learning. During Reading, the students that chose to present in front of an audience, presented their book reports on an informational book. Also they got a chance to read a different type of informational pieces, two magazine articles of the Scholastic magazine "Ahora", and answering questions about them. On one about the island of Rapa Nui, the students had to answer to questions about the location of the island and their natural resources. On another article, students read about the holiday traditions of a girl from Argentina, and they had to write a short essay talking about their own traditions in Spanish. During our "Fancy Day", students worked on a Science lesson, finding out about why turkeys wear their fancy feathers and what is a wattle and a snoot. Students also put together a wobbly turkey using some supplies. During Writing workshop, I have continued my daily conferences with my students to go through the editing process of their informational pieces, and I can tell that they will be ready to be published pretty soon. I will add their pieces to my website so that you can have a spot for giving positive feedback to your child's piece, and if you have extra time, maybe to other students' pieces. Take a look at this week's slideshow! This week during Math we have been taking a look at the variety of multiplication strategies that we have learned so far, and we have introduced division with remainders. We read the book "A Remainder of One" buy Elinor J. Pinczes that illustrates the fact that a little soldier bug is always left out when his squadron of 25 makes formations of 2, 3 and 4 lines, until finally he comes to the realization that making 5 rows of 5 is the perfect formation that makes the organized and tidy queen really happy. The students created the different formations with 25 tiles before I could reveal that there was always a remainder of one, so it was a fantastic introduction of the concept of division with remainders. On the days after we worked on division problems with remainders and what to do with those remainders, as sometimes they could be split even further if we were talking about dollar amounts, slices of pizza, and other times we needed to provide extra containers for those remainders, like extra cars for children going to a swimming competition, or extra pages for trading cards. During Reading Workshops to conclude the lessons learned about informational reading, the students are completing a book report on one informational book of their choice, that the will also have to either present to the whole class in person, or create a video of that presentation just for me if presenting in front of the class sounds intimidating to them. The written book report covers questions about the different characteristics of informational text. During Writing Workshop I've had a chance to finalize a first full round of student/teacher interviews to help with the edition of my students' informational pieces that are coming along very nicely. Students have also worked on adding an introduction and editing punctuation and spelling. And during Social Studies, students have worked on finalizing their physical and political maps of America that will be soon ready for display. Finally on Thursday we went to collaborate and mentor Kindergarteners in Sra. Ibañez's class to help them create chains with patterns of two color beads to count by twos and fives. Not surprisingly, this collaboration is becoming a favorite for both grades. Mrs. Gallagher paid us a visit and was really impressed with the quality of mentorship of my students. Take a look at this week's slideshow. This week during Math, the students have been working with multiplication story problems, using all the strategies that we have learned and practiced already: ratio tables, arrays, and using base ten sets. The students have also started using coin values as another strategy to aide multiplication, counting in dimes or quarters can be a helpful visual aide to use friendly numbers. The students have also participating in some math games as a class or in small groups. During our Reading Workshop, the students have been learning how authors use specific vocabulary related to the topic of their informational books, and how they give definitions either inside of the text, or in the glossary. Students have also learned about finding the main idea and details of a section, and how the authors fluently move from one subtopic to the next, frequently introducing the next subtopic at the end of each section so that the readers have a cohesive understanding of the topic at hand. The students have been practicing close reading to have a deeper understanding of the process of reading and writing informational pieces. Next, the students have been applying similar lessons to their writing pieces, and I have been able to start one on one meetings with my students to respond to their writing questions and to start the editing process. I am looking forward to publish their pieces, although we still have some work to do. I will keep you posted. During Science, the students have been working on a final project to reflect the lessons learned on muscles and skeleton, vision and the nervous system, and explore these topics on a new animal. And to give you a couple of highlights that show the good heartedness of my students, your children, I just wanted to mention how proud I am of working with students that rise up to the occasion to mentor kindergarteners, that make their job to make a new student who doesn't speak English to feel welcome and to have friends to play with. They are such great kids! I don't have many pictures for this week, but here are a few. Have a great weekend! Just take a look at these fantastic teachers! Students worked with kindergarteners in Sra. Ibañez's class today on composing and decomposing numbers. The patience, dedication, preparation and care that they have shown is fantastic. The kindergarteners were completely engaged with the activities and listened to their personal tutor ask them questions in Spanish. What a beautiful collaboration and a great opportunity for my students to see things from the point of view of a teacher. Sra. Ibañez, Sra. Camara, Elba and I were delighted to see the amazing work they were doing. Enjoy the slideshow and have a great Thanksgiving break! These two weeks in our classroom, the students have been busy building and sketching multiplication arrays, playing multiplication and division games, adding more cups to a gallon, counting elapsed time, and building ratio tables to practice multiplication of two digits by one and by two digits, and multiplications with multiples of 10. Additionally, students have continued their practice in STMath, and started another journey in a different digital platform called Xtramath, where they drill their addition, subtraction, multiplication and division facts. During Reading Workshop, the students have continued learning about informational texts, making a list of their interests and discovering the hidden treasures of our classroom library, determining the main idea and important details to understand the author's message, and comparing two informational texts on the same topic to increase their learning. They have participated in guided group reading, partner and independent reading throughout the week. During Writing Workshop, the students have considered all the facts surrounding their informational piece to deliver accurate information to their readers, they have also considered the specific vocabulary related to their topic of choice, and how to include the definition of that new vocabulary in their pieces, so that readers get complete understanding of their topic. During Science, students have been learning all about the nervous system, how the body receives information, and how the information reaches the brain and it is processed, checking their reflexes with a few fun activities. During Social Studies, the students have been coloring the different countries of the continent of America. And during Growth Mindset and Mindfulness practice time, the students have learned about the messages that we give ourselves that show a fixed mindset, how we all have a mix of growth and fixed mindset, and how it is important to become aware of that without judgment. We have read a couple of fun picture books to illustrate the topic. I don't have many pictures of these two weeks, but here are the few I took. Have a great and restful weekend! This week in our classroom... During regular math time, the students have been learning about the metric system, using base ten pieces to create arrays and find the area of rectangles. During Number Corner, the students have been reviewing elapsed time to the 5 minutes, and investigating about liquid capacity with cups, quarts and gallons. They have also worked with additions using the number line, and have created numbers in the ten thousands using 5 digits and comparing their numbers with their partner's. During reading, the students have been reviewing the different vocabulary words in Spanish for informational features, as well as what they are for and where to find them in their expository books. They have also been comparing two different informational books on the same topic to find commonalities and differences between them. During writing, The students have started building up slideshows for their informational pieces, creating the title page and the table of contents, and narrowing their topic. During our mindfulness practice, the students have been learning the differences between a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, and have been looking at the different areas where our mindsets are one or the other. And finally, during social studies, the students have started creating a map of North and South America, and marking the areas of Natural features. Take a look at this week's highlights. Have a great weekend! This week in our class, the students have been working on creating a Great Wall of Base Ten during math, and understanding place value with numbers to the 10,000. They have also been showing their strategies to solve multiplication equations. During reading workshop, students have been working on adding more information to our charts about character development of the main characters of several stories we have read in the classroom. How were the characters different at the end of the story compared to the beginning of the story? During Science, the students have been learning about the reason why some animals can see better in the dark, and why when we take pictures of them in the dark, their eyes glow. In Social Studies, we have been working on a reading comprehension passage to learn about the position of the United States in the world. We also had three students picked by Mrs. Gallagher to be part of the School Council, and we are very proud of them! On Wednesday, when we lost power, we got the perfect chance to read a couple of spooky stories before we were dismissed, and today we have had tons of fun building the best structure to hold a cauldron filled with candy corn. Check this week's slideshow for some interesting moments of learning. Happy Weekend! |
AuthorHello! My name is Esther Willinski, and I am a fourth grade teacher in Massachusetts. Join us in our journey through 4th grade! Archives
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