LOOKING FOR DONATED ITEMS

Our team will be working with the 4th grade team downstairs on Thursday, December 22nd. We are looking for the following materials for our activities:

• fleece material
• bags/boxes of rice
• children's new white socks

Reading Conferences

Student stop and jots are so helpful during our reading conferences. When I meet with readers I can browse their thoughts and help them continue with a reading job that stems from their own interest and observations about their book. This has been so motivating for students.

Here are a few pictures of some reading jobs students have completed:

39 Clues : This student noticed places in the book where the clues seemed like they would be something real. This reader researched and she found that their were real life connections to Mozart and Benjamin Franklin.

A student who loves cats read nonfiction and found facts she didn't even know about cats. She was very surprised that there were still things to learn, she thought she knew everything there was to know about them!

This student did a top 15 gross facts from the book Gross but True . His poster even contained a warning label: "Warning: If you do not like gross things please step outside!!!"

Spelling week of 12/5

Due to the field trip, our spelling instruction day will be Tuesday, December 6th. We will test on these spelling patterns on Monday, December 12th!

Spelling

There will be no new spelling words tomorrow, November 22, 2016. Enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday with your families. Next "A" day will be December 5. This is also our field trip...this may cause spelling instruction and introduction to new words to happen on the 6th. More to come, I will keep you posted!

Reading Celebration

Our class has finished our reading unit on interpreting characters. As a celebration of our learning, we created self portrait of a reader bookmarks. Students were encouraged to look at their reading logs, stop and jots and fill a bookmark with who they are now as a reader! Below are a few beautiful samples.

STEM CHALLENGE: Candy Toss for Accuracy

Today for Halloween we did a STEM Team Challenge.  Students were given a problem and had to come up with a solution...Mr. Jones is sick and cannot handout candy tonight, so students had to design a gadget to get the candy from his door to the sidewalk for trick-or-treaters.
Maker's lab materials included popsicle sticks, rubber bands, twist ties, one paper cup and 2 feet of tape to launch a starburst into the treat bucket.  Groups had 30 minutes to build and test and then measured 4 test trials to find the average distance that their candy landed from the target.  After the trials, they wrote a detailed reflection about what worked and what didn't and how they could improve next time.  It was so much fun.  Happy Halloween!

Students participated in their first writing celebration on October10th. We read our stories with small groups of peers and provided compliments on each other's writing.  Our next celebration will be in November and we'll be sharing with another 4th grade classroom.

Interpreting Character

“Once there was a princess who was very beautiful. She shone bright as the stars on a moonless night. But what difference did it make that she was beautiful? None. No difference."
Why did it make no difference?" asked Abilene.
Because," said Pellegrina, "She was a princess who loved no one and cared nothing for love, even though there were many who loved her.” 
― Kate DiCamillo, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane
Our reading class is really enjoying the story The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. As we have been reading we have been paying attention to the thoughts, feelings and actions of the character. This is leading us to determine a character's traits. As we hear the narrator describe Edward's thought, we have been asking, "Why might the character behave this way?" In this way, we are gathering evidence to support our ideas about the character's traits. Edward has experienced his first major problem in the story and students are noticing how Edward is reacting to the obstacles and he is developing and changing in the story; this will eventually lead us to the theme of the story.

Students are having wonderful conversations about the book, making predictions and listening and adding onto or respectfully disagreeing with each other ideas. They have been noticing patterns and when the author repeats something. Fourth graders are understanding that this is done intentionally  and they are making predictions to what this might really mean, something bigger! This is one of my favorite read alouds!

Ask your child to share with you what they are thinking about Edward Tulane. Encourage them to stop and jot about their independent reading by thinking about characters in their fiction stories the way we are thinking about characters from Edward Tulane.

We have started lunch group Wednesdays! Every Wednesday students from our team are chosen to eat lunch with the teachers, so we can have the chance to get to know them better and create positive relationships. Here is our first crew!

It's Publishing Week in writing class! Students are working right up to their deadline. Be looking for their personal narratives to be on display at Open House.

We will be unveiling our "Friendship Across Teams" next week. Students from the upstairs fourth grade team will be able to visit their friends downstairs, and on Thursdays the students from downstairs will be visiting us upstairs. We look forward to providing students with this opportunity!