McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of April 4-8, 2016

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, April 11th - Weekly reading logs due / Matchbox Diaries due

Tuesday, April 12th - Home link due

Wednesday, April 13th - Full Day Wednesday

Thursday, April 14th -  Spelling due

Friday, April 15th - No School: start of April Vacation!

Academic Updates:

Reading Workshop

We have two projects going on simultaneously this week and next.  First, the kids are working on their Matchbox Diary boxes.  They started the plans and decorating the boxes in class this week, and they have a purple project description sheet with details.  This is due on Monday, all finished.  If anyone wants to chip in to help defray the cost of the boxes, I’d be grateful, but don’t feel obligated.  It was $16.00 for both classes.  The second project is a brochure of a historical fiction short text.  They’ll use the brochure to prepare for a book club meeting.  This work will be done in class, unless they need to finish up next week.  After vacation, we will start focusing on social issues in books.

Writing Workshop

I hope your writer leaves fourth grade understanding (and truly believing...though that might be a stretch) that taking the time upfront to plan a writing piece has an enormous impact on the strength of the piece.  Well, even if they don’t believe it, they’re getting plenty of practice!  We have used a couple different graphic organizers to record our ideas about the story elements for our historical fiction stories (character, plot, setting), and now we’ve almost finished story mountains to complete the planning process.  Next week, we will draft the stories, with mini-lessons about resolution scenes, summarizing vs. storytelling, and using small setting details to show the time period and to create a mood (that’s the advanced option).  Soon after vacation, we’ll start reading and writing lots of poetry!

Math

Unit 6 is behind us as students took the end of unit assessment on Thursday and Friday. Next week we will do some review work and tighten up on a few loose skills. After vacation it will be time to jump right in with unit 7.

Spelling

This week we worked on synonyms and prefixes.

Theme

Students worked hard to finish their landform projects this week.  As I mentioned in parent-teacher conferences, students assessed their states projects with me and then assessed themselves on the landform project.  I did check their work (and noted where I disagreed if I felt it was inaccurate), but on the whole, they were right on!  On Friday most classes had an opportunity to display their projects for their homeroom class and do a museum walk.  This project has been a great celebration of our individual strengths and talents and the kids have been able to see there’s more than one path to learning.

McFarland-Mayberry-Begley Bulletin

for the week of March 28, 2016

Due Dates / Upcoming Events:

Monday, April 4th - Weekly reading logs due

Tuesday, April 5th - Home link due

Wednesday, April 6th - Early Release Wednesday

Thursday, April 7th -  Spelling due / ABL

Friday, April 8th - Home link due

Reading Workshop

This week we read an inspirational story called The Yellow Star: The Legend of King Christian X of Denmark.  We had a lot of discussion about the relationship between the king and his loyal subjects, specifically about choices bystanders have in any given situation and the effects of those choices.  It’s a wonderful story (...and then I read on Amazon that it’s historically inaccurate!  D’oh!).  Anyway, we are using that book to identify details that the author uses that relate to the theme of the story.  We first identify strong words and phrases (“all stand together,” “fear,” “unarmed”).  Then we look for patterns in the words, such as “these are all words that describe how the citizens feel about their king.”  Then we use those patterns to develop ideas about what the possible themes of the story might be (courage, support, togetherness).  So in essence, we are using concrete details to formulate big, abstract ideas.  We are practicing reading closely!

Writing Workshop

We have been doing lots of “rehearsal writing” for our upcoming historical fiction stories.  We used a familiar mentor text, The Memory Coat, to show how the story follows a story mountain structure.  We also used old photographs of immigrants and asked ourselves, “What are the hidden stories here?”  (We talked about our own people-watching habits!)  The kids chose a person in a photograph and wrote a scene about that person’s situation.  This led me to realize that I need to do a review lesson next week on storytelling vs. summarizing!  And then partners worked to come up with three ideas for possible turning point scenes.  I will teach the writers to plan, plan, plan before we draft!  Check out this short video of a boat docking at Ellis Island.  You could hear a pin drop in the classroom as we watched the people disembark.

https://www.loc.gov/item/00694367

Math

This week students dove into dividing large numbers in a big way! First they made a Little Book of Awesomeness which is helping them to see large groups of multiples for factors 3-9. This little book is genius! :) Next, we started the process of dividing using an algorithm called partial quotients. Having taught this algorithm for years I can honestly say that it makes so much sense, and the kids get very excited once they see how quickly they can divide numbers in the hundreds and thousands with a one digit divisor.

    In addition to all this division students learned how to interpret a remainder in a division number story. Depending on the scenario they may need to ignore the remainder, round the answer up to the next number or show the remainder as a fraction. We will continue to secure these division skills in the coming week.

    One last bit of math this week - students learned how to precisely measure angles using a full circle protractor. Their accuracy and precision was impressive!

Spelling

This week we worked on spelling words with qu and gh.

Theme

In theme we have transitioned from states to landforms.  After sharing our prior knowledge and watching two introductory videos, students dove into a new project.  They are creating a reference resource to demonstrate their understanding of landforms and bodies of water.  This project has a lot of choice: some kids are making trading cards, some are making Keynote slide shows, some are building 3D models of a landscape, etc.  It’s so fun to see their creativity and how they’ve taken ownership for their learning.  The plan is to wrap up this project next week and begin a cartography project, where they will apply their landform knowledge in a unique way.