Last week was a great one. We did not have special events so we were able to hunker down in our subject areas and our science workshops, focusing on matter, began.
In math, fourth graders finished up Unit 3 with an assessment. The assessment revealed that all students made great progress in their learning about fractions and decimals. Students really applied themselves to the tasks, worked with a great deal of perseverance and experienced success! They had a second assessment on Friday which was cumulative - questions and problems relating to any concepts presented this year. We had less success on that one but still, students showed they are making steady progress. Unit Four has a focus on place value and multidigit computation.
In writing we continued our work on persuasive writing. You'll remember that students wrote their first pieces presenting a need for change. We are now working on making appreciative claims. Students have used the scoring rubric to look at a sample essay and are gathering topic ideas. We continue to practice work on grammar, syntax and semantics through our Daily Language Review. Students struggle to apply their learning from work on these isolated worksheets to their own authentic writing. Which reminds me, if you are not seeing blog posts regularly from your child, that means the basics have not been corrected (by your child) in his or her posts. What I mean by that is capital letters in titles, periods and sentences that make sense. I noticed this weekend that there are a lot of unpublished, uncorrected posts. I'll work on a system to support students in understanding this condition for posting and accepting the responsibility of correcting their work.
As I mentioned in the opening, we have begun our Wednesday science workshops. It is a series of four workshops regarding properties of matter and states of matter. We have combined the students from all core classrooms to create four new groups. These groups are cycling through the workshops. The workshops are Properties of Matter (Ms. Schoolcraft), Properties of Gas (Ms. Ward), Properties of Liquid (Ms. Weegar) and Conservation of Mass (Stewart). These workshops are designed to give hands on inquiry science experiences.
The snow day today will throw a bit of a wrench in the NAEP testing plans. NAEP (National Assessment of Educational Progress) also known as The Nation's Report Card happens every year in a random sampling of schools across the country. The test is administered at the fourth and eighth grade levels. When a school is tested, the test is given by outside professionals and the school's teachers (i.e. your teachers on Equinox, except for support staff and special educators) have no part of it. Given the selection process it has, I'm not sure there will be a make up day. We'll keep you posted.
Coming up we have the chorus concert on Wednesday. We are very excited about that. We will talk about and decide what kind of party we will have on February 13th to celebrate Valentine's day. We may do another Stone Soup type of experience. Students are encouraged to bring cards with an emphasis on the message rather than on toys and candy. As always, the rule is if you bring a card for one person in our classroom, you must bring one for everyone in our classroom. Skiers will have an opportunity to give and receive cards but the actual party will be at the end of the day.
I hope you will enjoy the new slide show in the side bar. This highlights the work in our Science of Sound with the Create It Engineers.
No comments:
Post a Comment