News and Notes 2/7

News and Notes

From Fourth Grade

Story Detectives

This week the fourth grade readers started work on a new comprehension strategy: making inferences. As we circled up for reading workshop, we read stories aloud and tried to pull together clues and draw conclusions about our reading. Making inferences is all about reading for details and connecting reading to prior knowledge. The fourth graders took up the challenge of becoming story detectives and did an amazing job with their first making inferences challenge. As we continue to dig more deeply into our fourth grade reading, comprehension strategies like making inferences will become second nature for all of our reading adventures.

Parts of the Whole

Multiplication is one of the biggest focal points of mathematics in fourth grade. This week the fourth grade mathematicians reached a new level of discovery as we began work on double-digit multiplication. Before moving into the “traditional” double-digit algorithm, we first built on our prior knowledge. We used what we know about basic multiplication facts and place value to solve long multiplication problems using a strategy called the “partial products” method. Although this strategy takes more time to find the final product, it is an important piece in understanding the concepts behind multiplication. The partial products method also allows the fourth grade mathematicians the opportunity to solve more complex multiplication problems using mental math. It was exciting to see how our understanding and success with the partial products method grew as the week progressed. As we move ahead towards the more efficient and “short-cut” methods of long computation, it is important to have these concept-building strategies in place to build upon. Not only are we finding the right answers to problems, we are able to explain how we arrived at these answers.

Map Skills

The fourth graders took some time this week to explore the world of geography. As we enter a new unit in social studies on Colonial America, we first take some time to build up our understanding of geography. We worked together in small groups to complete various map challenges that helped us review concepts like the compass rose, map keys or legends, and longitude and latitude. These map skills will help us in our study of history as well as the practical need to get from place to place using a map. So, if you're ever lost, we have a class full of map-reading experts who can help you on your way!