Happy Friday!

Hey Families!

We had a great week in 4th grade and it seriously went by FAST!

Writing
We started the week with our personal narrative pre-assessment.  The kids had to write about their best friend.  Then we moved into studying published personal narratives as well as some super kid personal narratives from previous 4th and 5th graders.  We ended the week writing in our weekend journals- I hope you're enjoying those!  The kids were so excited to share the letters you wrote back with their friends- thank you so much for taking the time to write those.

Social Studies
We started our geography unit this week.  We started with talking about where we are in the world (planet, hemisphere, continent, region, state, city, street).  One of the kids' favorite parts of social studies this week was watching a silly clip of a talking map telling us all about the continents and oceans.  That "Europe" was a real ham!

Math
We got into the full swing of our math groups this week and had so m uch fun!  We definitely have our rotations down.  Our first topic focuses on numeration.  We reviewed standard, expanded, and word form this week as well as rounding.  Today, we are focusing on values of money.  We will most likely be ready to take our first math test at the end of next week.  Look for a review to be sent home on Wednesday or Thursday of next week.

Reading
This week we focused really hard on our reading stamina.  On day 2 of stamina, I was completely blown away that the kids read for 27 minutes!  We are talking about true, engaged reading for almost a half an hour for 19 4th graders- wowzas!  We will slowly be working our way up to doing our Daily 5 rotations.

As you can see, we had a really busy week!  In addition to these subjects, we are still working on building our community.  One fun way we did this was when kids worked in groups to make something out of some random items from my craft cabinet.  They had to problem-solve, work as a team, and make decisions together.  The results were pretty fun- some hot air balloons, a faulty security camera, a trumpet, and a paddle ball game!

We are also working on our class rules (if these rules seem familiar, they are from the Whole Brain Teaching model that lots of schools in CPS use):
Rule 1:  Follow directions quickly
Rule 2:  Raise your hand to share an idea
Rule 3:  Raise your hand to leave your seat
Rule 4:  Make smart choices
Rule 5:  Keep your dear teacher happy
We are doing a great job with these rules, although we are really working on #1 and #2 :).

I hope you have a fantastic weekend!