Hello to all of our 4H Families! We've survived a couple of cold weeks, with more indoor recesses than anybody wants, but... we can take it! There's so much to accomplish in our classroom, so we are keeping it warm inside. We've just completed reading "Number The Stars" by Lois Lowry in Readers' Workshop, and after reading our kids' Thoughtful Log entries, I know it is a story that has made a lasting impression. We are winding down our Historical Fiction unit, and it has opened up a new genre of stories to 'get lost in' for most of our 4th graders. Our next focus in Reading will be all about interpreting and analyzing themes, ideas, and life lessons in the books we are reading. Which books share the same idea/theme, and how does one book handle that compared to another book? What are we learning for ourselves from what happens to the characters in our books? Our 4th graders have been demonstrating their growing ability to dig deeper into story meaning, and they are ready for these next steps. It's very exciting and rewarding!
In Social Studies we have been doing some analyzing and comparing, too. We are traveling through the time period in the early 1800's when the native Americans had to make room for the growing population of new settlers from the east, and our area's transition from Territory to Statehood. We want to cover the beginning of our brand new state government, so we are prepared with the background to fully appreciate what we will see and hear about next Thursday. Next week on February 26th, we go to the Wisconsin State Capitol and then the Wisconsin Historical Museum. MANY thanks to the 14 parents from our classroom who will be meeting us downtown for our trip! Wow! For those parents who are going, you can plan on meeting us on the ground floor rotunda of the Capitol between 9:45 and 10:00. Our guided tour will begin at 10:00am. We will be walking over to the Historical Museum at 11:30 to eat our lunch in their lunchroom on the first floor, and then our tour guides will take small groups throughout the Museum beginning at 12:00 noon. After an hour with our guides, we will have one more half hour to tour around ourselves with our chaperones, before boarding buses back to school at 1:30. Parents, please remember to send along a completely disposable lunch for your child that day (unless they have ordered a school sack lunch). Chaperones, feel free to bring a lunch and eat with us at 11:30, too.
We are finishing up Unit 7 in 4th grade math, and we will take the Unit Test on Wednesday of this coming week. It has been a pretty hefty unit with a lot of new fraction work. These concepts and skills will come up again in 5th grade, getting reinforced and built upon next year, so if complete mastery is not demonstrated this year, our kids will still have learned some good foundational skills that will make a difference next year. It is clear once again that the students who are still struggling with knowing their basic facts are the ones who struggle the most with our lessons.
We are about ready to celebrate and enjoy the fruits of our labors in Writing Workshop. We have completed our "How To..." Books, and will be presenting them to each other, and then to our first grade buddies. This project has also given our students a great opportunity to practice their skills with some researching online and saving information to their Google Drive. Our next unit will be taking our research a little deeper by focusing on the life of a historical person, and practicing our skills with note taking and organizing information.
You should have seen a new bright green sheet in your student's Take Home Folder from Friday. This sheet confirms every family's conference time on March 3, 4, or 10. I look forward to seeing you and your child to talk over how 4th grade is going! In the meantime, I will keep you posted on other events and reminders that come along. See you all soon! Melanie Hannam
