Mrs. DePlaunty's Fourth Grade
October 2, 2015
Math:
This week in math we spent several days adding and subtracting large numbers to 100,000. The students worked as partners to review computation skills and solve for sums and differences. We will continue to practice adding and subtracting throughout the school year, but this is a skill that many of the children still need continued practice with at home. Our class played games, such as Close to 100,000 with partners to make learning even more fun! Students completed a chapter assessment today. They will reflect on the progression of their learning next week and develop a plan for future growth of these concepts. Next week, we will begin our unit about using estimation to evaluate whether sums, differences, products and quotients are reasonable.
Questions you can ask your child:
How do you think you did toward meeting learning goals and demonstrating that on your assessment? What do you think you may still need to work on to master the learning goals in math? How did you grade yourself on the learning scale in math (1, 2, 3, or 4)?
Reading:
This week in reading we worked on reading intensely. Students are learning that every part of a books is important and our books make us stop and do work to comprehend what we are reading. Students learned to reread, stop and jot at parts of your book that you want to talk about later, and to put yourself in the book. We also discussed how to select the books we WANT to read and are at a reading level that are helping us grow as a reader. We are currently reading aloud the book The Tiger Rising. We are anxiously awaiting what will happen to Rob? How did the tiger get in the middle of the woods? Will Rob ever be able to open his suitcase and let out his emotions. We are hooked!
Questions you can ask your child:
What characteristics to realistic fiction stories have? What realistic fiction book are you reading in class? Do you like the book The Tiger Rising? Explain why or why not. Are you growing as a reader? How do you know? Are you reading as much at home as you can? Are there extra times in your day that you could read just a little more (in the car on the way to soccer or dinner)?
Writing:
We finished a fun writing project called The Best Part of Me. We can't wait for you to read our stories and see our project on display during conferences later this month. We worked on how to write a well-developed paragraph and edited our work with our peers using rubrics.
Questions you can ask your child:
What is the difference in a common and proper noun? What are some important parts of a well-developed paragraph? What did you write about for your The Best Part of Me story? Do you think you are using your best penmanship in class?
Social Studies:
We completed our study of social scientists this week. We did a fun, hands-on activity with the artifacts the children brought in on Tuesday. We saw old stamp collections, records, sales receipts, copies of the Constitution of the United States, report cards of our parents in elementary school, etc. It was so much fun!! We began our new unit about mapping skills and the regions of the United States. Students created a birds-eye view map of their home and divided into four regions based on common characteristics. Again, we had a great time sharing these with our classmates.
Important Dates and Upcoming Events
Thursday, October 8th - spelling packets due and spelling assessment
Friday, October 9th - Move-A-Thon for literature
October 21, 27 and 29: Parent/Teacher Conferences
October 30: Halloween celebration
Move-A-Thon for Literature: Children received pledge sheets for our annual fundraiser last week. The teachers at Westwoods are very excited to help raise funds for purchasing books and items to support reading in our building. Please encourage your child to try to obtain pledges, so that they can help earn awesome literature for our school from our Move-A-Thon.
We are still in need of a classroom representative for PTO. If anyone would be willing to represent our class, please email or jot me a note in your child's planner. We would really love your help!
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