News and Notes 10/24

News and Notes

From Fourth Grade

Rounding Around

At the grocery store, telling time, and on a road trip...  These are all occasions when knowing how to estimate comes in pretty handy.  This week the fourth grade mathematicians focused on the specific estimation skill we call "rounding."  We applied our growing knowledge of place value to the concept of finding an estimate.  We practiced rounding to the nearest given place value.  Using different analogies and tools, we found the benchmark or "friendly" numbers and then decided which our given number was closer to.  The goal in understanding rounding is to develop our number sense which will help us later as we dig deeper into computation.  The fourth grade mathematicians were certainly doing a fabulous job of rounding around this week!

Q and A

This week the fourth grade readers got to practice applying our most recent comprehension strategy to their daily reading.  Every morning during reading workshop we sat together reading our individualized daily reading books and recording questions in our reader's notebooks.  As we read, we also paused to record answers to the questions we asked.  After a while, we would pause in our reading and questioning and answering to share with our reading partners.  This class is full of enthusiastic readers and this week in particular the group felt like a strong and engaged community of readers.  We'll have to keep brainstorming ways to dig more deeply into our love of reading!

State House

One of the greatest comments that can be shared with a group of students would be about their impressive learning habits.  This week we went to visit the New Hampshire State House.  As usual, the students from Simonds were well behaved and respectful.  Their manners and self-control weren't their most noteworthy characteristics though, it was their obvious enthusiasm for learning.  Their tour guide kept complimenting them on their great questions and connections.  It's true, this group of fourth graders is particularly excited about learning as evidenced by the great knowledge basis many of our classmates had on history and civics.  What an encouraging moment it is for a teacher to hear students being praised for their love of learning!  This praise however is obviously to be shared with the awesome fourth grade families who provide enriching and exciting opportunities for each child to experience the joys of learning outside of the classroom. 

Student Government

In close connection with the State House visit, this week the fourth graders participated in the election of student council representatives.  Students who were interested in running wrote and delivered speeches to their classmates.  Then the whole of the fourth grade voted on who they thought would be good representatives of the student body at Simonds School.  In the end we not only had three student council representatives, we also had an experience in the democratic process!