Newsletter #9 Monday, November 28, 2016
Dear Fourth Grade Families,
I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving break!
Reading (Integrated with Science)
This week in reading we will be focusing on Expository Nonfiction. We will read a book called Animal Senses: How Animals See, Hear, Taste, Smell and Feel. The topic of animal senses is aligned with our science focus on animal structures. We are looking at internal and external structures that animals have to support their survival, growth, behavior, and reproduction. Before the break, Felix Neck came in to lead a workshop on bird beaks and adaptations. Students were able to see how beak shape and size allows certain birds to eat certain foods. As we read, students will be using comprehension strategies, such as wondering to help them make sense of a text. Students will also use schema to articulate all they think they know about a topic before they read. We will be expanding vocabulary as well, exploring words such as flexible, predator, prey, dissimilar, focus, function, vertebrate, and invertebrate. In spelling we will focus on prefixes (dis-, in-) as well as r-influenced vowel patterns (i.e. part, bare, pair).
Writing (Integrated with Social Studies)
Our writing is integrated with our Social Studies unit on Immigration. These are the essential questions we have been exploring:
- What makes people take a risk?
- Why would people leave their homeland to start a new life in a new country?
- How do people choose where to live?
- What are some challenges that a person might face when trying to start a life in a new place?
Thank you for taking time to share your family history with your child and in turn with the class. In reading, we have explored these concepts by working in small teacher led reading groups. We looked at nonfiction sources about immigration and wrote paragraph responses and summaries using text evidence from the reading. We focused in on content vocabulary (i.e. ancestor, descendent, immigration, immigrant, citizen, artifact, steerage, tenement, etc.)
Now in writing we will create a fictional immigration character and take them on their journey from homeland to America through Ellis Island! This is a culminating project that allows students to put together many of the skills and ideas we have been exploring. In writing, these are show not tell (adjectives, simile, strong verbs, dialogue, onomatopoeia, said is dead, and adverbs). In social studies, students are sharing their understanding of the parts of the immigrant journey to America 100 years ago (Leaving homeland, boat ride across the Atlantic, arrival at Ellis Island, and adapting to life in a new country).
Math
Before the break, we did a check for understanding on metric measurement. The students did a great job and are ready to move forward into Module 3:Multi-Digit Multiplication and Division. Please see the Eureka Math Tips for Parents sheet that is being sent home on Monday 11/28. In this module, we will start with applying multiplication and division to contexts such as area and perimeter to set the stage for multiplication and division of multi-digit whole numbers. We will practice various ways to model these problems, moving from concrete to abstract.
Before we start Engage NY again, we will explore a Cathy Fosnot Investigation: Muffles and Truffles (Multiplication and Division with the Array). The focus of this unit is the development of the open array as a model for multiplication and division. The investigations give students an opportunity to explore place value. BIG IDEAS: Unitizing, distributive property of multiplication, the commutative property of multiplication, place value patterns that occur when multiplying by the base, the associative property of multiplication. Strategies will include using repeated addition, skip-counting, using partial products, using ten-times, and doubling and halving. The model we are using will be the open array.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at or at school at x216.
Kate Lefer