News and Notes 1/24

News and Notes

From Fourth Grade

Author's Message

This week the fourth graders continued their look at story structure. We explored the concept of “author's message.” We tried to answer the question, Why did the author write this book? Some stories we've read had clear messages, almost like the “moral” of the story. Other books were more complicated and it seemed like the author may have had more than one message they wanted to share with their readers. In following with our work on character, setting, and plot, the author's message is a good last piece of the narrative story structure puzzle. We look forward to putting these pieces all together next week as we create our own “story structures” based on our independent reading.

Assembly Lines

The assignment was simple: design a product and create a plan to produce it in an assembly line. The fourth graders were extremely enthusiastic when they were presented with their industrial engineering challenge. Working in small groups, the fourth graders put together their knowledge of simple machines, industrial engineering, and basic design to create a product. Through the planning process, the fourth graders sharpened their cooperative learning skills and had to demonstrate flexibility and even practice compromising and modifying plans for the sake of the whole group. In the end, the fourth graders designed amazing products and their assembly plans were creative and effective. By the end of the week our classroom had been transformed into a factory where teams were working together to manufacture and assemble their own products. What fun to see science, math, engineering, and creativity all come together!

Respectometer

As the second quarter comes to a close, the fourth graders are moving into the last half of their school year. We took some time these past few weeks to discuss our goals and hopes for the coming months. One subject that continues to come up is that of respect. How can we show respect more in our classroom? How can we help others be more aware of respect? What do we do when someone is disrespectful? All of these questions have arisen in fourth grade recently. In response to these ideas, we've created a way to chart our progress in the area of respect. In the back of our classroom lives our “respectometer.” This tool is here to help us keep track of our choices, and to help us be more aware of the need to show respect. As we move into the second half of the fourth grade year, we expect to continue to see all kinds of great choices and respect being demonstrated in our classroom community!