Week of March 19- March 22

The learners continued drafting their persuasive papers this week. There were many aspects that were either reviewed or introduced with this form of writing. They continued worked on beginning paragraphs with topic sentences, having the rest of the paragraph relate, and using transitional phrases such as "First of all..". They talked about the best way to creat a call of action being using sentences that start with active verbs.

We talked more about how we infer when we read. That we continually draw conclusions from what is not being said explicitly. We did this last week by reading factual primary documents of the excitement surrounding the Gold Rush (mentioned last week). We also talked about inferences in the book, By the Great Horn Spoon! The learners are working on doing several different activties along with reading their books to help them have a good quality discussions in their small book groups and as a whole class.

We connected the importance of reading with math by reading "actively" to answer problems that used a chart. Strong math skills were not the only skills needed to navigate the information on the chart and the questions. Some brought home their "Gold Mine" Charts to finish at home.


We also looked at fractions based on formulas. We used a variety of manipultatives (cubes, rods, pattern blocks, graph paper, and our fingers) to find out more about fractions. If we know one piece, than could we figure out the rest? Learners explored this concept through the use of maniputlatives. For example, if 8 squares of graph paper is eqaul to 2/3, than what is 1 whole or 1/4? It was a nice way for learners to make connections about fraction equavalents. We use a "peanut butter" strategy to support this where learners think about how the pieces would change if they were peanut buttered or stuck together. Want to learn more? Ask your learner how they would reduce 5/20? They also noticed that most of the time the fractions that could be reduced were both even numbers in the numerator and the denominator.

We had a great discussion today about the assembly. The learners brought up some insightful questions and powerful feelings. We decided that we represented the group that had everything and that we could do something about it within our classroom. Learners were asked to go home and talk about ways your family might already participate in helping others. One learner mentioned a girls school in Ethiopia and another mentioned sponsoring a local family through their church. We are going to share what we discover and decide how we want to move forward.

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.