News and Notes 3/21

News and Notes

From Fourth Grade

Curriculum Fair

This week the families and friends of Simonds School students were invited into the school for our annual Curriculum Fair.  The energy in the school in the days leading up to the Fair proves how much the students value this event.  As they spend all day, week after week digging deeply into their learning, it is so much fun to be able to share all this hard work with families and friends.  The fourth graders walked into the classrooms and proudly shared their work and learning adventures with their families.  It was so rewarding to see the community involvement and overall enthusiasm for the great learning taking place at Simonds School.  Many thanks to all the families and friends who took time to celebrate with these amazing students!  Your involvement gives us one more motivation to do our best with every challenge!

Painting with Words

In conjunction with our recent study of the reading comprehension strategy "making inferences", this week the fourth grade readers took some time to explore poetry.  We looked at the different poetic language tools that writers use to create poems.  We discussed how poetry is like painting with words.  We discovered some essentials of poetic language including simile, metaphor, and hyperbole.  The fourth graders did a great job identifying these different elements in the selection of poems we are studying.  They also were able to try their hands at writing their own similes, metaphors, and hyperbole.  Learning about the different literary elements of poetry helps us to better understand the poems that we are reading.  We are certainly enjoying learning how to read and understand these word paintings!

Home Sweet Home

In our continued adventures in American history, this week the fourth graders explored homes and communities in Colonial America.  We discovered the differences between different homes based on their location in the 13 original colonies.  We also looked at how the natural resources impacted the daily living of Colonial Americans.  We built models of colonial homes and villages.  It was a fun time of traveling back in time in our imaginations and identifying how different life was in Colonial America. 

MultipliACTION

As we conclude our study of long multiplication, the fourth grade mathematicians worked hard this week on some final assessments.  They finished their long multiplication stories and worked through a variety of performance tasks we called "Multiplication Mania."  After weeks of studying and scaffolding concepts upon concepts, it is rewarding to see how proficient these fourth graders have become with long multiplication!