4E News: January 2015

Dear Parents,

Happy New Year! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday break. So many students had great experiences to share from their time off weather they went far or stayed closed to Chennai. It is fun to hear all about everyone’s adventures.

Announcements:

Friday, January 23rd; 8:45-12:00: Upper Elementary Sports Day.
Jeff Moore asked me to remind parents that they still need volunteers. Please contact him at mjeffrey@aisch.org if you’d like to help out.

Assignments:

Passion Projects and the Data Mining Projects should be complete. Both projects should include reflections and be posted on students’ e-portfolio blogs.

Non-Fiction Books: We’ve spent the past week working to finish our non-fiction books. We will have limited time in the classroom to keep working on these as we need to move onto new units of study. Students who did not finish must continue to work on the books at home, and during recess and free periods. The books look great! We will have a celebration to share our books with parents at a later date.

Please read below to learn about our units of study:

Literacy: Poetry and Book Clubs

Poetry

We begin a short, three-week poetry unit this week. This unit is a nice change from our informational non-fiction unit and gives students a chance to be creative. Students will read and analyze poems as well as write poems of their own.

Our teaching points this week include:

· Recognizing the musical, visual, and emotional elements of poetry.

· Identifying and using different types of figurative language used in poetry including simile, metaphor, personification, and hyperbole. The Kids Poetry Dictionary includes the definition of these words.

· Identifying how and why punctuation, stanzas, and lines are used in poems.

Book Clubs

In addition to studying and writing poetry, we are starting another round of Book Clubs. Students will be reading books and meeting in groups to share ideas and questions about their stories. Students might have Book Club reading assignments for homework; if not, please continue to encourage your child to read a book they’ve chosen for their reading time at home or read and analyze poems from their choosen poetry books.

Math: Fractions

For the next few weeks, we will be working daily with fraction concepts. The big fraction concepts of the year are equivalent fractions, working with unit fractions, and fraction/decimal equivalents and comparisons. The Common Core math standards for fourth grade are quite rigorous (in my opinion) regarding what fourth graders should be able to do with fractions and they are a major focus of our work this year. They are a bit confusing to read, but if you are interested, you can read the Common Core fraction standards here.

Before break, we did some work with unit fractions. Next week, we are focusing primarily on fraction equivalencies. Specifically we will:

· Multiply fractions by a form of one to find equivalent fractions.

· Divide fractions by a form of one to simplify fractions.

· Find equivalent fractions to order fractions on a number line.

Science: Introduction to Solar Energy

This week, we begin our next science unit, which explores solar energy. Throughout the unit, students will conduct several experiments, which involve how energy is transferred to different materials different. This week, we will:

· Explore what we know about the sun and its importance.

· Observe the movement of the sun through sky throughout the day.

· Track shadows throughout the day.