Week of December 8-12

Announcements:

Christmas Tree Lighting: Monday December 8^th at the Hyatt Regency
Hour of Code: Tuesday and Wednesday December 9 and 10 during lunch. (students have received an email and are all encouraged to attend this global event)

Field Trip to SPEED TRUST:  Monday, December 15th, 8:45-12:45

Winter Holiday Party:  Tuesday, December 16, 2:00-3:15

Winter Holiday Concert:  Thursday, December 18th

Field Trip to Speed Trust:  4A will be taking a field trip to SPEED TRUST Monday, December 15th.  Read more about the trip here.  Permission slips will be sent home this week.  If you’d like to attend the field trip, there are some spaces for parents as well.  Please email me if you’d like to attend.  

Winter Holiday Party:  4E will have our Winter Holiday Party Tuesday, December 16th from 1:30-3:15.  This party is sure to be a blast for students and parents.  Not only is it a good opportunity to celebrate the holidays around the world, but it also marks the half way point of our time in fourth grade; it’s great to have a celebration before heading off for the three week holiday.  We hope everyone can come!  Thanks in advance to Aura and Nicole for organizing.

Language Arts:  Non-Fiction Research

The students have been so engaged and passionate in researching and becoming experts on their water related non-fiction topics.   In the coming weeks, we will be creating books in the iPad app Book Creator.  

Reading Skills:

·       Identifying academic vocabulary related to our topic and creating a glossary.

·       “Reading” the information in diagrams to learn more about a topic.

·       Identifying the main idea and details to summarize non-fiction texts.

·       Read closely the introductions and conclusions of non-fiction texts.

Writing:

·       Revising to add academic vocabulary to our writing.

·       Considering how diagrams might help our own writing.

·       Identifying the main idea and details within our own text and writing summaries.

·       Write our own introductions and conclusions of non-fiction texts.  

A note on Book Creator Book Creator is an iOS app sold in the iStore in two versions.  The free version allows for one book, and the paid version, for US$4.99, allows for unlimited books to be created.  No students are required to buy apps, but I am encouraging students with their own devices to download the free version to write their non-fiction books.  Some students have suggested that they might be able to bring in iPads in for this project.  If this is possible, it would allow students to work on the books both inside and outside of school.  If not, all students will have access to a school iPad for writing their non-fiction books in Book Creator.  

Math:  Equivalent Fractions

The Multiplication and Division Assessment was sent home this week. It’s important to remember that if your student has not mastered a standard (skill), we will continue to work on that skill as the year goes on.  We will do this in a specific, targeted way.  We are working toward mastery of all the standards for all of the students. Students are finishing their “Choose A Number” project, which is due Monday, and is a compilation of the skills they have learned in their multiplication and division unit.

This week we move on to fractions.  Our first targets for the unit are:

·                Identify equivalent fractions in models.

·                Drawing equivalent representations of fractions using models.

·                Decomposing fractions using models.  (ex: ½=¼+¼)  

Social Studies: Data Mining

We continue to work on Data Mining.  Hopefully, this project will be done and on the blogs for viewing before the holiday break.

Have a great week.