Learning Update 1/27/2012

Dear Families,

It's been another busy week here in Room 264. It feels good to be back in the swing of things and back to our routines. Here's a bit about what we've been up to...


Art Docent: Big thanks to our Art Docent, Lisa Purdon. We had a couple of great lessons. Using clay, students made a dragon mask, in line with our later studies this year of the Pacific Rim. Lisa fired the masks in our kiln and then we had one more lesson involving glazing the masks. We'll have a quick final lesson where we add decorations.

Art Docent Lesson. Glazing our clay masks. Students learned what you see is not what you get--read the label. Purple actually looks pink as you paint it on!

FQR. Students compare notes on their fact/question/response charts during our reading materials adoption field test.

Coding text. Partners work together to show their thinking on a Revolutionary War text and map of Paul Revere's ride.

Math

• Went from using full circle to half circle protractors for measuring angles
• Worked with map coordinates, scale, and the global coordinate grid system--ie. latitude/longitude
• Extended our partial quotients division algorithm to two digit divisors, ie. 160 / 12

Reading

• With my involvement on Issaquah's Reading Materials Adoption Committee, we have the great privilege over the next few weeks to field test, or try out, four potential comprehension resources programs. One or more of these will be the standard for whole class instructional lessons next year. We're getting a sneak peek and the chance to try these great resources, which align with our current reading standards and goals for fourth grade.
• Focused on finding the main idea
• Practiced using an FQR chart to record facts, questions & responses (our thoughts) from non-fiction, historical fiction, and our own independent reading texts
• Learned to code text, showing evidence of our thinking, ie questions, background knowledge, paraphrasing, important information, etc.
• Practiced using an important information/interesting details/my thinking chart to pull important details from a non-fiction text on the revolutionary war

Writing

• Learned about different ways to support a thesis statement claim, ie kinds, parts, reasons, ways, or times
• Learned that the three ways should be categories, they should be different, and something students know a good deal about/are interested in/can write lots about
• Held a thesis clinic as a class, looking at boxes (thesis statements) and bullets (supporting reasons) that were working well and ones that needed some tweaking. We brainstormed ideas, setting each student up for success with topics and reasons they'll be able to write knowledgeably about in the coming weeks

Social Studies

• Read, discussed and wrote about the clash of cultures in the 1800s between Native Americans living in WA and Europeans who were here for trading and trapping
• Partner read about fur trapping and mountain men, discussed the Hudson's Bay Company
• Students began to research a notable figure in WA state's early history. They worked collaboratively and took notes in preparation for a short presentation with their group next week

Learning Updates 1.13.12

Happy Friday!

Here's the latest from our classroom. Monday is a holiday--Martin Luther King Jr. Day and so we'll resume school on Tuesday.

Researching & taking notes on explorers of Washington State

Presenting explorer research to the class

Taking turns writing information under the document camera so the rest of the class can record too

Communication Game. Trying to sign "fish" by wiggling silently on the ground

More sign language. Afterward, students came up with ideas for how to improve silent communication: drawing, facial expressions, props--actual things Lewis & Clark did too. What the "listeners" often heard and later reported to the class was hilarious!

Math

• We worked more on the partial quotients division method, introduced the U.S. Traditional method of multiplication, studied degrees and angles, and practiced using a half-circle protractor

Reading

• Read and discussed about petroleum and oil spills. Students took a quick quiz
• Read about explorers who came to WA state
• Continued reading and discussing Horse's Tale

Writing

• Learned about conversational prompts (sentence stems) like "For example..." "The reason for this is..." etc. for pushing our thinking deeper
• Looked back through our essay and narrative writing for great thoughts that could become a thesis
• Brainstormed thesis statements and held a thesis clinic where students helped each other revise thesis statements to be stronger and more clear

Social Studies

• Small groups read about various explorers, presented that information to the class, and we all recorded the information
• Examined, analyzed, discussed, and responded in writing to actual explorers' journal entries from Lewis & Clark's corps of discovery group
• Played a hilarious and fun sign language communication game--ask about this! The game simulated the difficulty of the communication between Lewis & Clark and the Native Americans they encountered

Learning Updates 1.6.2012

It's hard to believe it's already 2012. We started off the new year with a number of new units of study. Here's an important announcement before I tell you about the week:

Biztown—a highlight of the year for our fourth graders. The Disneyland of economics simulations.

Want to join us? Volunteer slots are filling up fast! We can only take a small number of volunteers from each class.

• Mandatory parent volunteer training, Thursday February 9^th in the Grand Ridge Multipurpose room, 6-8pm (for all parents who have not been to Biztown before)
• Biztown field trip, all day Friday March 16^th

If you would like to join us or have questions, please email our Biztown field trip coordinator, Michael Herzberg at herzbergm@issaquah.wednet.edu

 

Math

• We began Unit 6 this week: division, map reference frames, and measures of angles
• Practiced solving multiplication and division story problems, talked about division strategies
• Learned the partial-quotients algorithm of division. As I told the students, if this method had been around when I was a student it would have been my favorite!

Reading

• Revisited and worked some more on our Mountain Language program
• Talked more about thinkmarks (recording our thinking about our books on sticky notes and bookmarking them in our books). We pruned out thinking that wasn't very deep by revisiting notes we've written
• We'll do some reading response writing with one of these thinkmarks soon!
• Started a new read aloud: Horse's Tale, focused on short historical fiction vignettes through Washington's history from 1890s to 1980s. We've already had some great discussions.

Writing

• Started our new essay writing unit
• Learned about ways to generate ideas for essay entries
• Wrote short entries comprised of an observation--something students notice, and then their thinking about that

Social Studies

• Began our unit on early Washington State History
• Read, took notes, and wrote about early Paleo-Indians that lived here over 12,000 years ago. Compared coastal and plateau Native Americans of Washington
• We'll take an open book quiz on this reading from our book on Monday (chapter 2)