September 9 - 13

We had a busy week in 4A. The students are falling into routine and they have been excellent role models for the younger students in the school. Way to go 4A!

Following is an overview of our busy week:

Language Arts

We started KidBlog in Writer's Workshop this week. This is a blogging platform that supports students as both writers and creators of digital content. Using Kidblog, the students will be participating in daily quick writes. Students will create their own blog posts, as well as answer, review and respond to their peer's writing.

The format of the Kidblog daily quick writes include:

Monday - Journal Writing. Students will write a journal style post about their weekend or a topic of their choice. They will focus on writing skills that have been discussed in class. 

  

Tuesday - Talk about it Tuesday. This will always be an opinion based blog post. This week the students were asked to respond to the question "Which make better pets - cats or dogs?" We reviewed the format of opinion writing and varying their sentence starters.

Wednesday - WeSearch Wednesday. Students will be provided with a website link to research a given topic. As research takes time. the class will be working on the same topic for 2-3 weeks. This week's research topic was Terry Fox. After completing jot notes in a google doc, the students will blog about what they learned from their research.  

Thursday - Week in Review 3-2-1. The 3-2-1 format involves the students writing about 3 thing they learned during the week, 2 things they liked about the week, and 1 question they have going forward. This blog post gives the students an opportunity to review their learning, think about what happened at school, and express what they like about their own learning. Before the students write, we brainstorm to help us remember all we have done during the week. This photo demonstrate some of our brainstorming for this week.

During Reader's Workshop this week the students learned how to chose "just right" or a "good fit" books. Reading good fit books is essential if students are to progress as readers.

A just right book is one that students can confidently read and understand with minimal assistance. These are books that make students stretch—but just a little bit—so that they have the opportunity to apply reading strategies learned in class. Teaching students to chose a good fit book gives them a tool they can take with them each time they go to the library, bookstore, or our classroom library.

This week the students were introduced to the 40 Book Challenge. This will be an "in-class" challenge where the students are asked to read at least forty books during the school year. Students must read books in a variety of genres in order to complete the entire chart. 

We also spent some time on handwriting. The students were given a Fall Handwriting Joke Book to work on. The first joke was "What helps little pumpkins cross the road?" Answer: "Crossing Gourds!"

Math

We continued with our patterning unit this week by working on increasing and decreasing number sequences. The students worked on problem solving involving number patterns and we began reviewing pattern rules.

Social Studies

This week the students were asked to research and draw a picture of 6 land forms not discussed in class. We also covered titles of maps, labels, as well as, reading and drawing compass roses.

PE

Our focus continued to be cooperative games in PE this week.

 The students love playing Spy Tag outside when the weather is warm.

Art

The students enjoyed learning how to print their name using bubble letters. They created name plates in bubble letters and decorated the background with various sizes of polka dots.