News and Notes 6/5

News and Notes

From Fourth Grade

Drama

This week the fourth grade readers and writers began work on their end of year class play.  Using our Junior Great Books as a starting text, we selected The Elephant's Child for our play.  We broke into pairs to adopt a small section of the story.  We analyzed the different pieces of our parts of the story and then began rewriting the story into a play script.  We planned out what words or phrases we would need to quote directly from Rudyard Kipling and what parts we would rewrite in our own words.  Next week we will begin working on the visual piece of bringing this story to life.  There are so many possibilities when it comes to telling a story.  This fourth grade class is full of so many creative individuals and also demonstrate a general dramatic flair, so it seems very likely that this production of The Elephant's Child will be remarkable!

No Taxation Without Representation

This week the fourth historians explored the causes of the American Revolution.  We reviewed what life was like in Colonial America and found that there were many different factors that led up to the American Revolution.  Sometimes the students are surprised to learn that it took such a long time for colonists to consider declaring independence from England.  The study of history teaches us not only about where we have come from, but it also teaches us a great deal about how people work within a society and why we do what we do.  So, although we are focused on history, we are certainly learning more about sociology and civics and how the causes that led to the founding of our country impact us even still today.  We talked about the idea of representation and how our country has always held firmly to the idea that people should have a voice.  In our classroom and school we try to establish these important norms for our students and hope that as they learn more about civics, we will be instilling in them ideas that will help them be productive and engaged citizens of their communities.  As we look along the timeline of history from the "shot heard around the world" to today, we find that in many ways history is just a long line of cause and effect.  It is exciting for the fourth graders to learn and explore more of the story of our country and imagine what life was like at the very beginning of the United States!

Stepping Up

The letters have gone home and the news is officially out... all of the fourth graders will be moving on to fifth grade!  This includes the fourth grade teacher!  It is a great honor and an exciting opportunity to work together as a whole classroom community for two years in a row.  This week, as the rest of the school participated in "Step Up Day," the fourth graders imagined how they will step up to fifth grade.  Although our classroom will be in the same location and our teacher will be the same person, there will be so many new and exciting changes!  We will learn new content, we will have new opportunities and responsibilities, and we will be given extra privileges as the oldest students in the school.  It will be an exciting year and one that will be amazing to share all together!  Many thanks to the families of fourth graders who have worked so hard to support us this year!  We are very much looking forward to calling on you again next year to be an active and essential part of our fifth grade learning community!