News
and Notes
From Fourth Grade
Time Travel
This
week the fourth grade historians traveled back in time. Instead of entering a 21st century classroom
on Wednesday, the fourth graders entered a Colonial American classroom. Our day was complete with hornbooks, chores,
and school mistresses and masters. The
fourth graders learned about clothing, food, chores, games, and academics from
Colonial America. They discovered the
challenges that faced children in the 1700s and learned about the history of
education in America. What a fun day it
was to be able to participate in life from a different time period! Needless to say, although we thoroughly
enjoyed the experience, we were happy to return to modern times and the
conveniences and opportunities that we are blessed with as students and
teachers in the year 2014!
Experimenting with Electricity
What
allows the electrons to flow? That was
the question that the fourth grade scientists attempted to answer this week in
science. Starting with a review of how to
construct a simple circuit, we then tried adding different materials to the
circuit. If the light bulb stayed lit,
then we knew the material was a conductor.
If the light bulb didn't stay lit, we inferred that the material was an
insulator. In the end we had a long list
of materials that were either conductors or insulators. In our ongoing study of energy, it is nice to
add these new concepts and vocabulary words to our knowledge basis. These fourth grade scientists were both
enthusiastic and very adept at experimenting with electricity!
According to
the Text...
In
reading this week we have returned to reading expository texts. This week the challenge was for students to
answer questions using details from the text.
This kind of thinking requires a good understanding of text structure,
as well as an application of many other comprehension strategies. In order to be successful in answering the
questions, the students had to be reading the text for meaning. How exciting it was to see the students pointing
each other back to certain places in the text!
A critical reader will know how to use the information they have read to
support an idea or answer a question.
This is a skill that we can apply to many other reading experiences both
in and out of school!
Organizing
As we
finish collecting facts for our research projects, this week we learned how to
create an outline. A handful of the
students have already sorted their information into categories which support
their main thesis. From here, the students
add details to each category. This
outline will be used as the rough draft for our first five paragraph
essay. After such a long time of
research and so much energy being devoted to the prewriting step of the writing
process, the fourth graders were excited to get to writing their first drafts
of their papers! Organizing our thoughts
into an outline format is a great way to ensure that our ideas will be clear to
our readers!
Testing
As we
enter the spring quarter, it should be noted that there are some important
tests coming up for the fourth grade.
Over the next few weeks the students will be able to demonstrate their
amazing learning by taking these assessments.
Many thanks to families and friends for their support and encouragement
during these "testing" times!
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