Language Arts
For word work whis week, we've been looking more closely at word roots and suffixes. They will be creating thier own "cheat sheets" to help them with the rules/particular suffixes they have trouble with to use as part of their editing process in writing. During Writer's Workshop, we read samples of quaility persuasive essays. We are all rallying around a topic we feel passionate about and are all in the prewriting stage of the writing process.
This week we started reading By the Great Horn Spoon! (one of my favorite reads from this summer btw) in book groups. If you have a spare copy at home, may we borrow it, as we are sort a copy or two for our parent group leaders. Your child has been working on writing concise summaries of the chapters, including the main idea. They are also are making many connections with the interesting curriculum about the Gold Rush. They've been looking at and reading primary documents to help give them a sense of the excitement of the time. They've been working in small groups to read excerpts about "argonauts" from all over the world sailing towards San Francisco. They compared what they do at home when they are bored to what passengers did on the ship to pass the time during the long journey "round the horn". They read about different types of ships, good background knowledge for our field trip in June.

Social Studies
Gold was discovered in in the fourth grade. The learners went "crazy" when gold was discovered in the classroom. There was screaming, yelling, pushing, fighting, and chaos. It simulated what it might have been like in San Francisco when Sam Brannan ran through the streets yelling that gold had been discovered. Sam Brannan was smart because before he made his announcement he bought all the shovels and axes in the city for less than $2, and resold them the next day for $15. We learned that most of the people who struck it rich during the gold rush weren't really the miners. We also learned about how word spread so quickly from San Francisco via sailors and ship crews.

Buddies
It was so nice to see the fourth graders taking their K/1 buddies out on a "5 Senses" walk on Wednesday. It truly showcased how responsible, kind, and capable these fourth graders can be. Running into other multi-grade pairings doing interesting things on a beautiful day was so nice to see.

Math
In math we have been finishing our fraction unit and have been reviewing a variety of concepts related to the district MARS test. The goal was to help the learners feel confident with the style of the test and know exactly how they would be scored. I am feeling good about the test and can't wait to see how it goes.