Have a great vacation!

Hello Families!

Here’s a double dose (two week) update!

In writing we are working on informational texts.  Some of the themes we are working on currently are:

• choosing a topic you already know a lot about!
• organizing your information in a variety of ways
• creating several tables of contents to explore the above idea
• determining sub topics for each chapter
• ...and that is as far as we have gotten…

Students continue to write blog posts and to answer questions in writing about their reading.  We have a strong emphasis on RESTATING the question when we are answering one in writing.  We also had students respond to a written prompt on Wednesday.  They we used the same prompt in November to assess their skills and their growth.  There has been a lot of growth!

In fourth grade math we have been learning about area and perimeter.  We have discovered the formulae and what each one means.  Students have worked with measuring tools and with tiles.  We also spent two days engaging in an SBAC practice test.  

In third grade math students have also been learning about area and perimeter.

We have been learning some Geography lately too. It came up recently that most students love maps but didn’t know a lot about geography.  I have also observed that students really want to use Google Maps but need some structure to their use. We started learning about the seven continents last week.  This week we have been finding names of the European countries.  We also found the area of some of those countries.  Next we have studied a huge map of the United States.  Students found the area in square miles for nineteen countries in the US.  We compared those in size and found them on a large map in our Kiva.  We learned about New England and we noticed the four corners area of the south western US.  We will continue with these conversations.

Another fun shift in our work has been sharing books through playing Charades!  So fun.  We brainstorm book titles we all know and then we act them out and guess the titles.  

We will begin reading biographies together after break. Have a wonderfully joyful time with your children over the vacation!