September 16 - 19

Although it was a short week, we were very busy in 4A.

Following is a summary of our curricular activities for the week:

Language Arts

Kidblog

During Journal Writing on Monday the students were asked to write about their weekend They were assessed on their ability to write a paragraph, including a topic, at least 5 details and a concluding sentence. This will be the first writing assignment posted on PowerSchool.

On Wednesday, the students continued to research and take jot notes about Terry Fox Next week they will be compiling these jot notes into a paragraph about who Terry Fox was and why we participate in the Terry Fox Walk each year.

Grammar

We will be focusing on one grammar concept per week in class. This week we discussed making complete sentences, using a subject and predicate.

A subject is who or what the sentence is about. A predicate is what the subject does or is. 

At the end of the week the students were assessed on their ability to identify the subject and predicate  in sentences. Understanding subject and predicate will help students with complete sentence writing

Handwriting

The students worked on a few more pages of their handwriting joke book this week.

Reading Workshop

During Read Aloud time, I will be introducing students to books of different genres to encourage them to read something new. I will also take this time to teach and reinforce reading strategies. While reading "Fish in a Tree" this week, the reading strategy that we focused on was comprehension. We discussed that "Reading is Thinking." Research has shown that simply having students read more is not enough to improve reading skills. Students need to be engaged in thinking about their reading. 

One important comprehension strategy we want to teach our kids is asking questions. Questions like, “I wonder why…?” or “What does ___ mean?” keep us wanting to read to find out answers. Our curiosity compels us to find the answers. Learning to ask questions during the reading process is an important strategy because it teaches a reader to think aloud. I modeled how to ask questions  throughout the reading process while reading Fish in a Tree.

Typing Club

This week the students began using a program called Typing Club on the chromebooks. This program helps to teach them basic keyboarding skills. The students will learn the very basics of the home row to eventually learning the whole keyboard in a fun and interactive way.

Math

This week we continued with our patterning unit in math. We focused on extending patterns using a rule and identifying rules in increasing and decreasing patterns.

The students enjoyed playing Soldier Salute to practice their math fact fluency.

Social Studies

This week we finished our mapping unit. We reviewed cardinal and intermediate directions.

We also learned about longitude and latitude! These are the imaginary lines that run vertically and horizontally around our globe that make things like GPS possible.

The middle line of longitude is called the Prime Meridian, and splits our globe into Eastern and Western Hemispheres. The middle line of latitude is called the Equator. This line separates our globe into the Northern and Southern Hemispheres.

PE

In PE this week we focused on cooperative games and locomation The students learned how to play Caterpillar Riot and Frogs and Fish.