Happy December, everyone! Here's an update on what we've been working on in class lately!
In Reader's Workshop, we've been wrapping up our unit on exploring non-fiction - digging into all kinds of resources, finding out what makes each book/magazine/article/online report a valuable and helpful source of new information. Along the way we've been having a good time learning new facts about such wide ranging topics as extreme weather, natural disasters, global warming, drones, wild animals and sea creatures, glaciers, current events... I am also taking the opportunity whenever I can to give our students practice picking out the main ideas, identifying the supporting details, and learning the most efficient way to take notes - all skills that will serve them well in their future years. When we return from winter break, our focus will move to Historical Fiction, where we will also get experience reading and sharing our ideas within student Book Clubs.
I would like to encourage all of our families to keep it a priority, as much as it is possible in your busy days, to make special quiet time for your student to read and "get lost" in a good book daily. I know this can be a challenge. We stop and talk often in class about where and when we have each managed to find a time to cozy up with a good story, and it sounds like most of our kids love those times. This is probably the single most effective way to foster a love of reading and your child's reading skills, along with the ability to stay focused, and they will grow with every single day this can happen.
Writer's Workshop has been full of essay writing, and our students have done a beautiful job with clear thesis statements and supporting evidence. We are just wrapping up one last essay about an important person in our lives. We are typing them on our Chromebooks in the classroom which is also great for more keyboarding practice. These last essays will be coming home to be presented as gifts to their 'person' - and they are quite touching. Enjoy!
We've been using our various spelling lists to give ourselves additional creative writing experience along with handwriting practice! (Much needed!!) We turn our lists into creative sentences and imaginative stories as we practice the spelling patterns. This coming week we will receive one more big list of seasonal words before the holiday break which should give us another fun chance to practice our writing skills.
In Social Studies, we are finishing our chapter about the geography of Wisconsin. Warning -- many ideas for cool family trips around our beautiful state keep cropping up in our discussions!! :) Our next focus will take us back in time to how the first known native people of our state survived. We will move through time to discover how and why the first Europeans came here, and then on to how we became a state, exploring all the fascinating changes that had to happen along the way. In Science, it looks like our kids are coming to the end of their Rocks and Minerals Unit with Mrs. Bertz.
We should be able to take our final test on Math Unit 4 around the middle of this week. I took some extra days during this unit because it covers some major new concepts. We got into decimal numbers, banking, and the metric system! Yikes - all big, new information for our 4th graders! The whole concept of what numbers mean when they are behind the decimal point takes some new understanding. Using the idea of money helps that, so that led to the very informative lessons on withdrawals, deposits, interest, and balance (hence the questions that came home about savings accounts, etc.!!). Our decimal work was also the perfect set up to understand how the metric system works, which is also quite new to our kids. Meaty, useful stuff - these topics got a solid start here, and will be expanded upon and reinforced in future work both in this grade and in fifth grade.
Whew, we pack so much into our days! Along the way we've had fun with our Class ReadAloud book, Rain, Reign, collecting Pride Paws and growing our 'compliment chain' with our appropriate behavior and social skills, fighting to stay number one in the school wide contest for Box Tops For Education (we find out on Wednesday!), and of course, our Read-In Day was a hit. Thank you for your support with homework, regular reading times, and staying up to date with the contents of your student's Take Home Folders and Assignment Notebooks. Along with checking the Classroom Blog for the daily homework and reminders, these are the best ways to foster your own child's growing ability to be responsible for themselves.
It will be fun to see many of you on the morning of our Winter Tea on December 16th. I like to take some family pictures that day. See you then!
Sincerely, Melanie Hannam
