Mrs. Cox's Fourth Grade Fourth Grade Newsletter-May 5, 2008
Dear Fourth Grade Families,
The fourth graders returned from vacation ready to learn! Unfortunately, it took me a bit longer due to illness, but they welcomed me back with lovely well-wishes and some hard working, full effort days.
Our reading groups are currently practicing their fluency and comprehension, especially expressing their thoughts about reading in writing, with self-selected biographies, Trouble River, and Chocolate Fever. We will also be putting our skills to work as we help the first graders with a nonfiction reading project.
We are sending our monsters and descriptions to our pen pals to see if they can draw, then identify our creatures using only our writing. This week, we will be getting back into paragraph writing, starting with some review, then lots and lots of practice. We are also practicing writing to prompts in preparation for a district assessment in which students will be doing so.
The spelling unit I described in the last newsletter got put off so we could practice with multisyllabic words a bit more. So now we will be working with vowel-consonant-e syllables, such as cape. Also, we will be combining these with closed syllables, which we have worked with a lot, to spell words such as reptile. As always, we continue to practice our “No Excuse” words.
Students did a lot of fraction creating last week as they made decks of fraction cards to be used this week to order and compare fractions. We will be comparing two fractions with one another in the game Capture Fractions, then students will make number lines with their fractions cards, comparing them with 0, ½, 1, and 2. Next week, we will start looking at how fractions and decimals relate.
I am very excited for students to share their finished Maine people and places projects today. Those that were passed in last week were wonderful and clearly a lot of effort was put into them. We continue to work on our timeline. We are using a great nonfiction book, The Cod’s Tale, to discuss not only the history of cod, but also the early exploration of our part of the country. Next, we will be looking at more groups that have come to Maine throughout its history. Also, our Junior Achievement will be starting soon. It will focus on how businesses work within Maine’s economy.
Enjoy your week!
Beth Cox