News and Notes 6/13

News and Notes

From Fourth Grade

Bringing it to Life

The end of the year is full of all kinds of special events.  In fourth grade, the end of the year is the time when we pull together all of our reading comprehension strategies for the year.  The culmination of our work in reading this year is a reader's theater project.  This week the fourth graders put together all of their reading smarts to create a play based on our recent read aloud, The Elephant's Child by Rudyard Kipling.  In order to bring this story to life, the fourth graders had to apply all of their comprehension strategies.  They made connections with the text, asked questions, made inferences, identified the key elements of the story structure, and summarized their piece of the text to create a script.  With some help from our room volunteer, Diane Brunetti, we were then able to use our creativity and artistic abilities to create backdrops and puppets and props for the play.  Needless to say, the fourth graders are very excited and proud of their great work.  What an accomplishment to pull together a full year's worth of reading and create such an awesome finished product!  We can't wait to share The Elephant's Child brought to life with you!

Geometry Masterpieces

A quick dip into the world of geometry gave the fourth graders a positive end to their fourth grade math experiences.  This week we reviewed and added to our knowledge of shapes, space, and measurement.  We talked about lines and angles and polygons.  We played matching games to review vocabulary.  We integrated art and math by creating geometry masterpieces full of different geometric figures and concepts.  We designed playgrounds and hid different measuring angles throughout these playgrounds.  We practiced using different tools including rulers and protractors.  This quick look at geometry was enough to get the fourth graders excited for this special branch of math.  Hopefully this will help when they look more deeply at the subject in fifth grade! 

We Did It!

This week the fourth grade writers completed their first ever five paragraph research essays.  What a long, complicated, and challenging assignment!  At various times throughout the week a fourth grade writer could be seen jumping up and down and enthusiastically sharing with their classmates that they had finished their research papers.  After weeks of researching, prewriting, drafting, editing, and citing, it is a huge accomplishment to celebrate!  Now the fourth grade writers can add published informational writer to their list of writing accomplishments! 

Final Days

With less than a week left of school there is still so much we have to look forward to in fourth grade!  Thank you to the families and friends for your support and encouragement of the fourth graders as they seek to end the year well and enjoy their final days of the school year!