News: 11/28/11

I hope your Thanksgiving was enjoyable!

Spelling words for the week: Words with the /ar/ sound (like car)

carved, garden, harm, farther, barked alarm, chart, starved, harder, parked smartest, charge, guard, argument, hardware, garbage, harsh, parts, radar, harbor. Challenge words: alarmingly, departure

We continue to work on division in Math and are working with fact families to help become stronger with the basic facts.

The students will be goinng outside when the weather permits...please be sure your child is dressing appropriately for the weather (coats, hats, gloves). I'd like to be able to take the students out for some fresh air for as long as we are able before it becomes too cold!

Thanks!

We are Thankful

This week in 4th grade we are learning about being thankful through paragraph planning and writing!  Your students should be bringing home their I am Thankful paragraphs before Thanksgiving.

We are currently working on division in Math.  We have learned about fact families and inverse operations!

We had our Spelling test today and the students did a great job!  I think having a couple of extra days was helpful. We will be back to our regular spelling routine next week.

Check it out!
To the right are a couple of new links!  Multiplication Games, Spelling City, and a couple of other fun things for your students to check out if they need something to do! 

As always, contact with me if you have any questions.

Have a great Thanksgiving!

News

This week has flown by.  Students have been working very hard.  We have been working on forming juicy detail sentences for our descriptive paragraphs about a room in our house.  It is really interesting to see the transformation as students revise and edit their work!

We have continued on in multiplication.  Recently we have learned about 4 properties that apply to multiplying. Ask your child about:

~Zero Property of Multiplication
~Identity Property of Multiplication
~Commutative Property of Multiplication
~Distributive Property

I'm looking forward to meeting with parents during conferences!  Hope to see you there!

Week of October 24

We are ready for a full week here in 4th grade!  This week we will be hard at work getting back into the groove of being in school for a full week and accomplishing much!

Our spelling pattern this week includes words with long and short e sounds.  Our test will be this Friday.  Students will be working with the words in class and should be studying them at home nightly.

 asleep

empty

queen

deal

needed

spelling

least

feelings

tea

keeping

beneath

agree

elevator

coffee

Wednesday

method

feature

metal

disease

television

Challenge words:

collector

suggested

In Math we are beginning our work with multiplication.  We will be adding to our Math Notebooks daily and will be participating in small group activities to reinforce our multiplication skills.  Students should be reviewing their multiplication facts through the 9s.  5-10 minutes of practice nightly with help students master these basic facts!  There are many games available online to reinforce these skills, also students can make flash cards from paper and pencil!

SPOT Club

Sullivan's Power of Thinking Club will be introduced next week!  The link is up to the right! I'm looking forward to the students' expanding their knowledge.

Power of Thinking Club - Students demonstrate the power of their brains and go “above and beyond” the learning that takes place in the classroom on a daily basis.

o   Available to all students in 4^th grade

o   Students are challenged by choice to answer up to 91 questions that have a variety of topics and allow for mastery of new knowledge.  Club time will take place during recess, lunch recess and at home if the student wishes to research and learn answers at that time.  Students come to me to answer the questions from their memory (again during recess or lunch recess).  If they are correct, they are awarded a point, if not they may try again the next school day.  Students who reach 16 points will be inducted into the Power of Thinking Hall of Fame which will always remain in the classroom.

o   Five Areas of Study

§  Social Studies

§  Science

§  Math

§  Language

§  Miscellaneous

Thanks for supporting your student in their efforts.  Remember, this is a challenge by choice club and not a requirement.

Week of October 3rd

Welcome to another great week in 4th grade! 

This week we continue to work on comprehension and fluency in our reading.   In Spelling we are focusing on Long and Short a sounds in our words.  Our test will be Tuesday, October 11th - this gives students plenty of time to study even with our shorter week this week. 

In math we are working on problem solving with multi-digit addition and subtraction.  We will be moving forward with multiplication starting next week.  Now is a great time to brush up on those multiplication facts!!  Check out the Homework page to the right for a link to many multiplication games students can play online to brush up on their skills. Another way to study is to make flashcards and review 10 or so nightly adding more as your students shows that he or she knows them well!

Book orders went home on Monday.  There are lots of great choices for the 4th graders!  I have also added our code so that families may order online if they wish.  For every online order we earn a free book for our class! You are welcome to send your paper order in to the classroom as well. Orders are due October 18th.  Please see this week's email for our online code and a link to the Scholastic website.

Please be sure your students are writing down their nightly reading and completing homework.  Students should be writing down their assignments daily in the classroom.  Check out the homework page if you are unsure of the daily assignments.

Have a great week!  Check back soon for pictures of students learning in 4th grade!

Exceding Expectation!

This group of 4th graders is really an awesome bunch!  They continue to exceed my high expectations and are doing a great job of communicating with each other about their learning and socially as well.

Our Daily 4 time is going very well. "Read to Someone" has been introduced this week. Our focus with "Read to Someone" is fluency and checking for understanding.  We are taking the opportunity to learn from each other and share our strengths with each other and it's going great! Our last Daily 4 choice will be introduced at the end of this week or the beginning of next. Once that is completed the students will move into making their daily choices and meeting with me within our strategy groups (skill based) and individual conferring sessions which will allow me to focus on the unique needs of each student!  I am really excited about the learning that will take place and the progress that will be made this year!

In Math we are finishing up our unit on Place Value, Rounding, and Comparing and Ordering Numbers.  Students will continue their practice and have a chance to demonstrate what they know over the next few days.  We will be moving into problem solving with addition and subtraction next.  We'll be focusing on strategies that will help us with different types of problem solving work.  The students are doing a great job with their math notes.  We are keeping daily notes of our learning and adding to our math vocabulary often.

Check back soon to see the students in action!

The Classroom, Before & After

While the room isn't completely done (what classroom ever is?), it's well on its way. Here are the before shots!

Desks in rows? Not my style at all...bring on the small groups!

We need some color!

The library corner, before.

Teacher's corner, before.

And here are the after shots, much more colorful and ready for a great year of learning!

As you can see, still some work to be done, but it is shaping up!

I love having a small class...it makes for nice groupings and lots of cooperative learning opportunities! The students will switch at various points throughout the year.

Teacher's corner after, disguised by the computer area.  I'm rarely back there so it's not a focal point.

Our meeting area.  Comfortable and colorful! The table in the foreground is our strategy group meeting area for both reading and math, as well as our individual conferring table for times when I meet one-on-one with students. While it may look like it in this photo, it is Not a catch-all for my stuff!

Our behavior chart is really challenging the kids to go above and beyond.  The really like that they have the opportunity to "clip-up" for great behavior and the chance to "clip-(back)up" if things weren't going so well.  We only keep track of how the day ended, so if they aren't happy with their place, it can change! I'm hard at work keeping track of great behavior!

This is our supplies area.  I am going to brighten up the shelf a bit to match all of the color in our room...when I find some extra time in the day!

The awesome pass board, I found the board at Target, then my dad did the vinyl lettering, I made the passes in Photoshop, mounted them on cardstock and laminated in the hopes that they may actually last the whole year.  It's a really great tool for keeping track of who is out of the room at any given time.

Our library. The books are sorted by series, author, subject, and there are some general baskets for books that don't "fit" a particular series or subject.  I've also added some pillows for comfy seating around the room. The red bin is our Book Hospital, for those books that have been well-read and really loved!  I'm thinking I may add another set of lower shelves since the bins on the upper shelves are a little high for some of the students.

Our take on the Daily 5, I found the great signs on one of the many awesome teacher blogs I read. 

The CAFE menu board - our reading strategies ~ we'll be adding to this throughout the year.

Our writing center.  While students can work around the room, they can stop in to check out ideas for their writing, the writing process, or publishing.  The mail sorter holds a variety of papers for the students to use when publishing their writing, as well as extra reading logs, check-in sheets, writing paper, etc.  The brown bookshelf to the left holds student book boxes, as well as dictionaries, thesauruses, and other writing helpers!
I hope you've enjoyed this brief tour of our classroom.  More pictures will find their way to the blog as the year goes on!

Day 3

Can I just tell you how much I LOVE teaching 4th grade?!  Yes, it is day 3 but the kids are doing a fabulous job!  I'm so very proud of all of their hard work. 
Today we began with our Read to Self portion of the Daily 4 (a modified version of The Daily 5). This way of teaching Literacy is really designed to meet the needs of all students at their individual learning levels, something I strive to do daily! In our classroom we will be using: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Work on Writing, and Word Work.  This will be unfolding as the first few weeks progress and the students will then be completing 3 rotations daily ~ Read to Self, Work on Writing, and a choice of Word Work or Read to Someone.  This method also provides ample time for me to confer with students individually and in small groups to work on strategies that will strengthen their reading and writing skills, while students are engaged in meaningful reading, writing, and word work (spelling and vocabulary). I can't wait to see the growth and learning that will continue to take place daily in our classroom!

Our Math lesson today was all about place value and 3 ways that we can express numbers. Ask your child about standard form, word form, and expanded form.  How much do you remember?  Students are also learning about keeping organized notes which they will be able to refer back to throughout the year.

Check back soon for more Tales!

1st Day ~ Fabulous

Wow! What a great first day! Today set the tone for a great year in so many ways. I'm really looking forward to working with these great kids!

We organized supplies, talked about expectations and procedures, learned about the classroom jobs, had a tour of our classroom that highlighted the "new" and refreshed the "old", and learned about the 3 ways to read a book: to Read the Pictures, Read the Words, and Retell the Story. We also read First Day Jitters which tells the tale of an unlikely person with new school jitters. The students were surprised by the ending I think.

This blog is still "under construction" as I plan how we are going to use it to benefit students and families. Coming soon: Homework assignments, links to learning websites, photos of our classroom, student work, and information for parents on what is going on in our class every week.

My excitement for the school year is heightened to a new level, I can't wait to see what happens next!

Welcome to 4th Grade!!

Welcome to our 4th grade blog! I am really looking forward to this year and all of the learning and growing that will be accomplished!

Tomorrow is our first day of school. I'm so excited to see all of my students' smiling faces and to see how much they have all grown since last year!

Homework assignments, learning websites, and much more will be coming soon so check back often!