McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

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Reading Workshop

We are spending most of our energy establishing and practicing routines, while slipping in a little new learning here and there.  Most students have been doing well with reading logs so far.  Please remember that they are due on Monday, and there is some supervision on your part to help w/ adding minutes and to sign it at the bottom before it’s handed in to show that you’re aware of your child’s reading this past week and agree that the log is fourth grade quality.  What does fourth grade quality work look like?  Well, all fourth graders are different, and while we recognize and accommodate for those differences, we would like students’ work…

• to look like the child tried hard
• to look like the child cares about the work
• to have mistakes erased and not written over
• reasonably neat (or even very neat, if possible)
• to be done in regular pencil only
• to be complete
• to have correct capitalization (Your child has a chart in her/his reading notebook that lists the capitalization rules.)

Please check the log as often as needed to make sure your child is filling it out completely.  There shouldn’t be a whole lot of blanks or question marks.  There may be a question mark when your child has looked for but can’t find the level of a book.  With your guidance, have your child try the Book Wizard at Scholastic.com: http://bookwizard.scholastic.com/bookwizard/

Use this site to check the Guided Reading Level, to find books at certain levels, and to search for books similar to a favorite.  Not all books are in the database, and not all books have a reading level.  Over the course of your child’s reading life, s/he has learned other strategies to choose books that are a good fit, and we call upon those strategies often.

Books your child reads at school and for school can come from anywhere: any of our three classroom libraries, home, book stores, public libraries, etc.  Check out the photo of one of this week’s charts for some guidelines.

Writing Workshop

This week, we started off with a brief review of personal narrative writing (small moment stories), and then students showed their stuff through a writing prompt on Thursday.  While I haven’t read all of the stories yet, I took notes on my observations during the prompt, and I was impressed with what I saw.  ALL children generated an idea independently.  All children were engaged in their work, many for the entire 40 minutes!  I saw a number of students using strategies learned in earlier grades: using interesting leads, using carets to revise(!), and some evidence of paragraphing.  But honestly, what struck me most is it appeared that every child sees her-/himself as a writer, and tackled the prompt knowing s/he could write.  I think this speaks to the consistency and quality of our writing curriculum and the diligence of the teachers at MIW in terms of creating an environment where all children are and feel capable.  I’m very excited about the year ahead with the Mayberry and McFarland writers!

Math:

This week students participated in activities which promoted a positive growth mindset around learning math. We watched several short videos produced out of Stanford University under the leadership of Dr. Jo Boaler. In the first lesson we discovered and discussed how everyone has the capacity to learn math through perseverance. Much like working our muscles we must work our brain in order to strengthen mathematical connections. Students explored how looking for patterns and drawing mathematical representations help to connect the pathways in our brains which allows us to deeply understand math concepts. Along with the videos we worked on several challenging activities that helped to highlight the importance of how we learn math.

Throughout the year I will be encouraging these positive norms in math class.

Next week we will be jumping in with the first Everyday Math unit.

Spelling:

This week students took a pretest and a survey about their strategies as a speller.  These will not be graded and sent home, but they give me an idea of what patterns students know and don’t know, as well as what spelling strategies they have.  Next week we will start our first spelling unit.  I will do the homework in class with the kids for the first week, so they understand how to complete it and what we expect for quality.  

Theme:

Students started the year participating in several engineering challenges during theme time.  The purpose is to introduce students to the 4th grade ABCDE of problem solving (ask questions, brainstorm, choose an idea, do it, evaluate) and to start to develop a growth mindset within each student.  Students built card towers, a structure to hold pennies, and even engineered their own notebook!

Students also had a chance to observe the “naked egg” experiment, which demonstrates osmosis and is an example of some of the kitchen chemistry we’ll do throughout the year.

Next week we will begin our first unit, rocks and landforms.

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, September 14th - sneakers for P.E.

*Tuesday evening, September 15th - Fourth Grade Open House for Parents 6:00-7:00pm (in your child’s homeroom classroom)

Thursday, September 17th - writing notebook covers due

*The Fourth Grade Open House will be Tuesday, September 15th, from 6:00-7:00pm in our classrooms.  You will have a chance to meet all three teachers and learn about your child’s day and the curriculum of fourth grade.  We encourage you to attend and look forward to seeing you there!