It’s amazing that Thanksgiving is right around the corner. The year is zooming by. Here’s an update on what kept us busy in grades 3 and 4 the last couple of weeks.
In Social Studies, we built upon our first hand experience of Plymouth Plantation by having a mock town meeting. Each student was given facts about a person from the Mayflower, and tasked with representing that person as various issues facing the colonists were debated. Through role play, we practiced kind discourse and constructive ways to disagree with one another. Later on, we compared and contrasted the Inca and Inuit pre-colonial lives with that of the Wampanoag. Highlights included examining primary source illustrations to inference the Inca way of life, and watching videos of an Inuit boy building an igloo, and the mystifying colors of the aurora borealis.
Students continued independently researching Helen Keller, using different books I brought in. I’ve been restocking our class library each week with new material targeted for each student’s interests and reading level. They seem to be enjoying the books during choice time, and I’m happy to say that their independent reading stamina is improving. They speak highly of books they are reading at home as well! For writing journals, I’m pushing students to build a repertoire of approaches to writing about and discussing their reading.
In writing, students have been especially detailed in their weekend news pieces each Monday. This past Monday’s writing served as a starting point for quite a few mini lessons about paragraph structure, topic sentences, and writing to find meaning. We expanded upon small moments, and practiced ‘showing not telling’ in order to make our sentences more descriptive. Students came up with a list of emotions and identified how each could be illustrated through facial expressions, body language, and dialogue. This tied in with our reading work to identify the main ideas of various passages and books.
We finished Charlotte’s Web, had some thoughtful closing discussions and wrote pretend interviews with various characters from the book. Our new group read aloud is Because of Winn Dixie. We will be focusing intently on vocabulary with this reading. Students are at an age where exposure to new words via reading is extremely important, and in addition to my focus on spelling and grammar, I am going to increase the number of new words we see and use in class.
In Science, we brought our physical science unit nearly to a close. Students worked hands on with circuits and (safely) demonstrated conductivity through water. We did a vocabulary hunt through the use of textbooks, articles, and videos in order to master academic words related to our studies. Students have been very excited about a game called Little Alchemy, which uses simplified elements to represent the scientific processes of changing states of matter, and element combination. The game encourages creative and critical thinking, provides opportunity to discuss symbolism and metaphorical ideas, and sparks curiosity about how things are made. We will be building off of this spark as we move from our physical science to earth science unit.
In math, we have almost finished the current modules in both grades, which focus on measurements, rounding to various place values, and comparing estimates and actual calculations in multi-step word problems. The math questions are complex in the sense that they ask students to hold various pieces of information in their minds as they decide what information is necessary for each part of the problem. My goal is for students to read questions carefully and to master a thought process that gives them confidence to tackle multi-step tasks. This test taking strategy will serve them well in the future.
Lastly, we started learning to type with proper hand positioning on Qwerty keyboards, and are making a winter wonderland in Drama! I am sure I’m leaving things out, but that about sums it up!
Thank you, and if I don’t see you Wednesday at the luncheon, I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend.
In Social Studies, we built upon our first hand experience of Plymouth Plantation by having a mock town meeting. Each student was given facts about a person from the Mayflower, and tasked with representing that person as various issues facing the colonists were debated. Through role play, we practiced kind discourse and constructive ways to disagree with one another. Later on, we compared and contrasted the Inca and Inuit pre-colonial lives with that of the Wampanoag. Highlights included examining primary source illustrations to inference the Inca way of life, and watching videos of an Inuit boy building an igloo, and the mystifying colors of the aurora borealis.
Students continued independently researching Helen Keller, using different books I brought in. I’ve been restocking our class library each week with new material targeted for each student’s interests and reading level. They seem to be enjoying the books during choice time, and I’m happy to say that their independent reading stamina is improving. They speak highly of books they are reading at home as well! For writing journals, I’m pushing students to build a repertoire of approaches to writing about and discussing their reading.
In writing, students have been especially detailed in their weekend news pieces each Monday. This past Monday’s writing served as a starting point for quite a few mini lessons about paragraph structure, topic sentences, and writing to find meaning. We expanded upon small moments, and practiced ‘showing not telling’ in order to make our sentences more descriptive. Students came up with a list of emotions and identified how each could be illustrated through facial expressions, body language, and dialogue. This tied in with our reading work to identify the main ideas of various passages and books.
We finished Charlotte’s Web, had some thoughtful closing discussions and wrote pretend interviews with various characters from the book. Our new group read aloud is Because of Winn Dixie. We will be focusing intently on vocabulary with this reading. Students are at an age where exposure to new words via reading is extremely important, and in addition to my focus on spelling and grammar, I am going to increase the number of new words we see and use in class.
In Science, we brought our physical science unit nearly to a close. Students worked hands on with circuits and (safely) demonstrated conductivity through water. We did a vocabulary hunt through the use of textbooks, articles, and videos in order to master academic words related to our studies. Students have been very excited about a game called Little Alchemy, which uses simplified elements to represent the scientific processes of changing states of matter, and element combination. The game encourages creative and critical thinking, provides opportunity to discuss symbolism and metaphorical ideas, and sparks curiosity about how things are made. We will be building off of this spark as we move from our physical science to earth science unit.
In math, we have almost finished the current modules in both grades, which focus on measurements, rounding to various place values, and comparing estimates and actual calculations in multi-step word problems. The math questions are complex in the sense that they ask students to hold various pieces of information in their minds as they decide what information is necessary for each part of the problem. My goal is for students to read questions carefully and to master a thought process that gives them confidence to tackle multi-step tasks. This test taking strategy will serve them well in the future.
Lastly, we started learning to type with proper hand positioning on Qwerty keyboards, and are making a winter wonderland in Drama! I am sure I’m leaving things out, but that about sums it up!
Thank you, and if I don’t see you Wednesday at the luncheon, I hope you have a wonderful holiday weekend.