Friday, November 21, 2014

Jeff Kinney Visits!

In Reading Workshop, strong connections between reading and writing were emphasized with the special visit of Jeff Kinney, author of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, on Wednesday.  WCS was very fortunate to welcome this accomplished author to speak to students in grades 3-6 and learn a bit about his journey to success in writing.  Ask your child what his/her favorite part of the presentation was.  Students continue to read independent reading books and some are working on group reading selections.  Students using Lexia are working to accomplish at least 80 minutes of engagement with the program each week - and several students have been inducted into the “100 minute club!”  

In math, Third graders spent this week wrapping up their November number corner work, as well as, finishing unit 2.  Students took an assessment to demonstrate their learning in this beginning multiplication unit.  Work with unit fractions, equivalent fractions, improper fractions and mixed numbers was introduced through this month’s number corner, and students are becoming more comfortable solving multi-step story problems and using equations with variables to model their thinking. In fourth grade math, students have been discovering the connections between multiplication and division.  Students have worked hard to understand what it means when a quotient has a remainder.  We have read about this, built models of division problems and made conjectures about what exactly a remainder is.  Our current definition of a remainder is:  When the divisor is not a factor of the total, you will have a remainder.  Julia H. made this conjecture and it has been widely proven and accepted.  You can see there is great mathematical thinking going on!  We have also been studying the analogue clock and elapsed time.  On Friday, we had the Unit 2 Assessment.

This week, we moved into the “adaptations” part of our science unit.  Students read a nonfiction text, Mystery Mouths, which highlighted various adaptations that help animals survive.  Students played a “guessing game” with the text, and did an activity to practice making inferences with photographs of “mystery feet.”

 This week in writing, authors focused on identifying sequence for their realistic fiction pieces, and practiced writing effective leads.  Next week, we will focus on strong endings for stories.

Beginner Band Lessons begin next week.  If your fourth grader is participating, please remind him or her to check the schedule regularly and that it is their responsibility to attend their lesson at the correct time and make up any missed work.  Thanks for your support from home.  

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