October is Flying

We have been working hard and having fun.

We just finished a favorite read aloud, A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck. The students really enjoyed the characters, especially Grandma. And now we have moved onto Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo.

In math, we finished the mid-module assessment. After a quick glance we were proud of all of the students. Because this is a new assessment the fourth grade teachers will need to grade the assessments as a team and we will pass along more specific information about your child's performance at that time.

Fact fluency continues to be a struggle for most students. We will need to set aside more classroom math time for fact fluency work. Please be sure to have your child practice math facts for approximately 10-15 minutes a night. Next week we will incorporate a place to track math minutes on the homework pack.

We will begin working with Bar Models (tape diagrams), the standard addition and subtraction algorithm, and continue our with place value by relating the addition and subtraction problems to representations on the place value chart. We will also work as a class to develop an organized process for approaching word problems.

In ELA/SS we will continue our in depth study of the Haudenosaunee. We have been taking notes while reading in order to develop well organized paragraphs about our reading. Now we are working on writing powerful concluding sentences by asking ourselves, "Why does this matter?" We are taking notes on a new graphic organizer and will incorporate the new graphic organizer into next week's homework pack.

****The reading paragraph in the homework does not need to be a summary. The students may make any reasonable claim about their reading that can be supported by specific details or examples from the text.