McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of March 23, 2015

If you would like to be notified whenever I post to our class blog, please click on the space to the right, “Follow by Email.”

Reading Workshop

Your child is working on a “diary” project for which s/he needs to bring in at least five small items that will fit in a 3” x 3” cardboard jewelry box.  The items should represent a meaningful experience, place, or person from your child past.  We were inspired to do this project from a book called, The Matchbox Diary.  Check out the details here: http://www.amazon.com/The-Matchbox-Diary-Paul-Fleischman/dp/0763646016

Details of the project are in your child’s homework folder and were handed out early this week.  The items are due on Monday, when we will share our diaries in small groups.

Writing Workshop

We are well into our work for a second literary essay flash-draft, for a story called, “The Marble Champ” -- which is the reason your child might be trying to strengthen her/his thumb muscle, FYI.  The kids have been working in partnerships to find evidence in the story of a variety of big ideas in order to evaluate whether those ideas would make strong thesis statements for strong essays.  They’re becoming more independent and are needing less and less guidance from me...so far.  Many students are less confident than I expected when it comes to the actual writing of the paragraphs.  So for this essay, I’ll be offering choices of different degrees of teacher help.  I have a hunch they’ll gain more confidence through the writing of this second flash-draft.

Math

Having secure multiplication facts sure came in handy as students learned how to find a fraction of a whole number this week. We also started working on adding and subtracting like fractions. Students did some problem solving work this week involving the Greely girls basketball team. This problem was multi-layered and students did a great job using their math skills and a little perseverance!

Theme

This week students finished their continent maps.  Students have been assessing the projects with me, so they understand how they have met/exceeded the criteria.  

    Study guides were passed out the the Begley class (Thursday) and the McFarland/Mayberry classes (Friday).  Each class had time in class to prepare study cards.  We will review for one class period (likely Monday) next week.  The quiz will be Tuesday for the Begley class and Wednesday for the Mayberry/McFarland classes.

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

**The Book Fair is happening this week.  Family Night is Wednesday, April 1st from 5:30-7:30pm**

Monday, March 30th - Reading logs due / sneakers for PE

Tuesday, March 31st - Study link due / Map & Landform Quiz - Begley class / Conferences

Wednesday, April 1st - Early Release  / Map & Landform Quiz - McFarland & Mayberry classes / Sneakers for P.E. / Conferences / Book Fair Family Night

Thursday, April 2nd - Spelling due / McFarland class goes to the Book Fair

Friday, April 3rd - Study link due

Any letters for placement are due to Mrs. MacArthur before April 16th.

Enjoy the warmer weather!

McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of March 16, 2015

If you would like to be notified whenever I post to our class blog, please click on the space to the right, “Follow by Email.”

Reading Workshop

Thank you to all those families who have been talking with your fourth-grader about your ancestors!  Kids have been excited to share with the class little tid-bits of information about who came from where and when and whether through Ellis Island or somewhere else.  A couple kids are sharing photos and copies of documentation — it makes what we’re learning so real!  And don’t worry if you don’t know where your family is from or if it’s “boring,” like mine.  When I asked my mother about our heritage, she replied, “We are apple-pie American!”  Not exactly helpful…Thankfully my aunt has done the research.

    On a more academic note, the kids are reading all historical fiction in class these days.  They have a choice to continue that reading outside of school, or they are welcome to continue with other books of their choosing.  We now have a chart that both Begley and McFarland readers are contributing to that shows short texts and chapter books and their themes and time periods.  In addition, students are completing written responses in class about a couple of class read-alouds, where they are showing their smarts in relation to envisioning, empathizing, identifying theme, and synthesizing their learning to write about what it was like to live in certain time periods.

Writing Workshop

We are off to a good start in our literary essay work!  I used this analogy with the kids: Think about unpacking a suitcase once you arrive at a vacation destination.  While unpacking items, your mom might say, “Why did you bring a headlamp with you?”  You might have to explain to her the reason you brought the headlamp is so you can read at night under the covers without disturbing anyone else in the hotel room.  Sometimes you have to explain why you chose to bring something.  

    This past week, we worked on writing supporting idea paragraphs in which we “unpack” details from the story.  These details are chosen with the purpose of supporting the thesis statement.  Yet it’s usually not enough to simply write the details.  In addition, writers often need to explain to readers why they “brought” certain details from the story.  So, once we’ve “unpacked” a detail from the story, we’re using phrases that can help us start those explanations, such as, This shows…This makes me realize…The reason I mention this is…This is important because…  It’s this kind of very deliberate instruction that helps kids to create strong, full paragraphs that show not only a deep understanding of what they’re reading but also how to be clear when writing about it.

Math

Fractions have been our main focus this week and will be for a while. Basic fraction understanding, operations with fractions and problem solving using fractions are a big focus in the Common Core Math Standards. When talking to math teachers in the upper grades, including high school, they will often site fractions as being one of the weakest areas for students at their level. Last summer Ms. Russell, Mrs. Harrington and I worked to align the Everyday Math unit on fractions with the Common Core. It is our hope that students leaving fourth grade will have a strong grasp on these important math concepts. You can help at home by taking opportunities to talk about fraction use in the real world such as cooking, woodworking, sewing, etc...

Theme

This week students started their continent maps.  After picking a theme for their continent, they designed a land, complete with major landforms and  map features (compass rose, title, key, scale).  Students are using art paper and watercolor paints to make their maps come to life!  I hope to have these on display at conference time.

    It is likely that soon we’ll begin to prepare for the end of the unit quiz.  We will be doing so as soon as kids are done with their maps, so while I can’t set a definite date right now, be on the lookout for email updates and study guides at some point next week.

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, March 23rd - Reading logs due / sneakers for PE

Tuesday, March 24th - Study link due / recorders

Wednesday, March 25th - Early Release

Thursday, March 26th - Spelling due / ABL

Friday, March 27th - Study link due

Have a terrific weekend!

McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of March 9th

Reading Workshop

This week, we started to build our background knowledge of all things immigration!  While we are focusing on the time period when Ellis Island was used as a processing center, we have talked briefly about how immigration is still happening today, with all its complications and opinions.  Some students are asking parents about their own heritage, and they’re becoming curious about whether their ancestors came through Ellis Island.  Check out Mrs. Mayberry’s ThingLinks on her web page for more information for your child!

    I’ll be asking some students to pilot a new reading log format for the next few weeks.  Stay tuned to see if your child will have a change.

Writing Workshop

We have started my second-favorite writing unit, Literary Essay!  Students will be reading closely a handful of short texts.  I’m teaching them how to practice envisioning and then to develop thoughts and ideas, all the while staying accountable to the text.  This unit combines the best of our reading skills with the practical work of an essay.  Every year I am struck by how sophisticated the writing is during this unit, and I think this year will be no different!

Adventure-Based Learning

Adventure-Based Learning is hard!  Students are presented with challenges in which they need to work in groups of 10 or 12 to generate ideas to overcome the challenges.  Then, they try out the ideas.  And it doesn’t end there!  They come back together to evaluate what worked well and what didn’t.  You might imagine what that looks like and sounds like, right?  And then they try again…  A twist might be added to make it even harder, so the conversations must change to allow for that in their new plans. And then they try it again…

This program is the definition of the 4 C’s:

• Creativity and Innovation
• Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
• Communication
• Collaboration

We held a class community circle after todays’ ABL session, and the question I asked was, “How have you benefitted from ABL so far this year?”

Students’ comments are below:

“In my group at first, we had a boy girl and a girl group, but now everyone talks together.”

“Compromising with my brother.”

“Compromising with others and teamwork.”

“Working with other people.”

“Communicating, and letting people w/ smaller voices speak up.”

“My team has gotten better at doing stuff together.”

“Doing everyone’s ideas.”

“Being flexible with the ideas and going with ideas, rather than making up my own and trying to convince others go w/ MY idea.”

“Compromising and mixing ideas together.”

“Communication.”

“Teamwork.”

“Compared and added to ideas to make them better.”

“Working with a team, persevering even when it’s hard.”

“Not blaming each other for failing.”

“Working with other people.”

“Explaining why I want to do something different than the group.”

“Overcoming challenging activities.”

“Talking with other people.”

I’m pleased to see the reflection from the kids, and I’m happy to report that I see carryover into the classroom.  Through these shared experiences, we can look back and refer to situations when we struggled until we were successful.  That’s some REAL learning right there.

Math

Students finished up unit 6 this week with a strong dose of division work, that included renaming the remainder as a fraction and determining what to do with a remainder in a story problem. We also worked on angle measurement. Students practiced drawing an angle to an exact degree. This is especially tricky with an angle that measures greater than 180 degrees.

    On Friday students took the end of unit assessment. Expect the progress profiles and unit work to come home by the end of next week.

    Next up: fractions!

Spelling  

This week students practiced using the five suffix spelling rules to add various suffixes to words.  We especially honed in on words that end in y, learning when you have to change y to i and when you can keep the y as you add the suffix.

Theme

This week students learned about landforms.  On Monday, we learned what a landform is and we looked at common landforms found in the state of Maine.  Students illustrated a picture dictionary that will serve as a reference tool for them throughout this unit.  On Friday, we read Weslandia about a boy who creates his own civilization.  The major project of this unit will have students creating their own civilization; a continent that features many of the landforms we are studying.  They will make a map of their land which will have many of the same features we studied last week (compass rose, title, key, scale).

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, March 16th - Reading logs due  / Sneakers for P.E.

Tuesday, March 17th - Study link due / recorders for Music

Wednesday, March 18th - Early Release

Thursday, March 19th - Spelling due

Friday, March 20th - Study link due

Hope you’re having a fabulous weekend!

McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of February 23, 2015

If you would like to be notified whenever I post to our class blog, please click on the space to the right, “Follow by Email.”

Recess

Please remind your child to come prepared to go outside for recess every day!  Many students are coming to school saying that they didn’t think we would go outside, and they end up outdoors without boots or a hat.  We have the kids go out for fresh air whenever the temps are above 10 degrees.  Please make sure your child is prepared.  Thank you!

Reading Workshop

This past week we started building background knowledge about slavery in America.  We are working to use nonfiction texts to help support our understanding of historical fiction books.  The time periods that we will focus on as a class during the historical fiction unit are: slavery, immigration, WWII/Holocaust, and civil rights, though individual students will be reading from a variety of time periods.  We’ll mix nonfiction, historical fiction, and web-based sources throughout this unit. 

Writing Workshop

Last week we focused on the differences between retelling and using storytelling language.  We did a community circle to brainstorm action words and feeling words.  This week, we will use a wordless picture book, The Farmer and the Clown, to practice storytelling language, like professional authors!

Math

This week in math students continued to work on partial quotients division. This is probably some of the hardest work we will do this year and having fact fluency with multiplication skills is very important. For students who aren’t quite there yet with their facts I am encouraging them to use a multiplication chart to help with the problem solving work. 

     We also worked on interpreting remainders. There are times with a division story problem when it makes sense to ignore the remainder, show the remainder as a decimal or a fraction, or round up the answer to the nearest whole number. Students need to be mindful of the question in the problem in order to interpret what should be done with the remainder. Much of this work focuses on applying math concepts to real life math problems.

Spelling

This week students learned that y at the end of a word can sound like long e or long i.  We also reviewed spelling rules for adding suffixes.  Students practiced this while adding -er and -est to adjectives to make comparative and superlative forms.

Theme

This week we wrapped up our magnetism and electricity unit.  Students spent two days using their study guide to make a study tool (flash cards, memory game, or Jeopardy) to bring home).  We played Jeopardy as a class and discussed the types of questions on the quiz.  Friday students took the quiz.  Next week we will start a social studies unit focusing on map skills and landforms.

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, March 2nd - Reading logs due / Winter gear & sneakers for P.E.

Tuesday, March 3rd - Study link due

Wednesday, March 4th - Early Release

Thursday, March 5th - Spelling due / recorders

Friday, March 6th - Study link due

Mrs. Belmore is teaching a snowshoeing unit with PE classes.  For PE on Mondays, each student needs to have a winter jacket, snow pants, boots, gloves or mittens and a hat.  They do not need to bring their own snowshoes.

We had a successful Iditarod on Thursday!  Channel 6 was there, as well as Mrs. MacArthur and Mr. Porter.  Here is a link to the story that aired:  http://www.wcsh6.com/story/news/local/2015/02/27/students-hold-their-own-iditarod/24132805/

Hope you had a terrific weekend!

Dena