Hello to our 4H Families, and I hope you are all staying warm and cozy in this super cold. It was a well timed day off from school today. The last two weeks since our Winter Break have been busy with new lessons and some quite rewarding classroom discussions.
We have started our Historical Fiction unit in Readers' Workshop, using Number The Stars by Lois Lowry as our class read aloud mentor text (such a captivating book - I highly recommend it to all!). It has opened up a whole new awareness of World War II and the Holocaust to our 4th graders. I appreciate how it gently presents the serious issues involved with this time period, centering on a preteen girl and her family in Denmark who leads us through her growing awareness of what is happening in Europe. We see the events unfolding through her eyes, and even though she is fictional, the events she lives through are accurate. We are also researching more on the historical facts as we go along. Our kids are very wrapped up in the suspense, and the new thoughts, questions, and ideas that are occurring to them daily as we read and discuss are so exciting and satisfying. They are hopefully carrying this enthusiasm and good thinking into their own new historical fiction books. They chose their first stories this past week, and they should be doing their best to read these every day. I give them time in class as much as I can, and hope they can read them at home, too. Thanks for supporting them with special time to read as much as possible.
Writers' Workshop is helping us to write up information from history in a logical and clear way. We are using our social studies topics. Right now we are well into discovering how the first native people in the area of Wisconsin and the Great Lakes survived and adapted over time to living in this climate with the resources of this rich land. I am walking our class through a first informational report, and then each student will have the chance to write their own historical account.
Our last unit in math had us learning the steps to longer multiplication problems (thanks so much for the extra practice help at home!). I hope you've had a chance to look over their Unit 5 tests and sign them. They need to come back to school this week so we can save them. The unit we started this past week is mainly about learning the steps to long division problems! Any time you can throw an extra problem (or three or four!) your student's way, please do! You will see what kind of problems we are tackling each day from their homework - we are working our way up gradually to bigger numbers and longer problems. Remember you can take a look at our assignments and reminders for all subjects and other activities on the Homework Page of our classroom blog. I update it every singe day after school.
Otherwise, there are quite a few extra opportunities for growth and teamwork happening these days -- our Battle of the Books teams (competition coming up in early February), the Fruit Bowl Writing Club, the Math 24 Club...and soon to be announced, our own classroom Gold Star Researchers (stay tuned). We will get through this winter with a flurry of fun learning activities! I will keep you posted on all events and reminders! Until next note --! Melanie Hannam
