WOW! I heard kids exclaiming today, "It's Friday already? This has been a short week!" I feel the same. This first quarter is flying by. We have a pet snake, Rusty, from the Science Center! I'm sure your child has told you about him. You can see a video of him molting on my twitter MrsDawson4!
In READING, we just finished a unit on informational text, focusing on text structure and text features. We've also been finding main idea in our reading. Students have been READING WILDLY! Their reading logs are growing every day, which is wonderful to see. I try to conference with students weekly, and it's been fun and enriching to hear what they think about their books. This week we started stations in reading, which we will continuously modify. Next week we begin a genre study on biography. In WRITING, we learned about the simple subject and simple predicate of a sentence. We wrote 2 word sentences about school! Example: Pencils sharpen. Clocks tick. Bells ring. Then we expanded our 2 word sentences, keeping the subject and simple predicate (otherwise known as the verb) together while adding descriptive words. We also wrote our first kernel essays. These are structured pieces that we can later expand upon to create an entire essay. In SOCIAL STUDIES, we started reading about Paleoamericans. We will continue that next week as we begin to study the Native American cultures in Texas. Please look for a conference sign up email coming to you this weekend!
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This was a great week! Students worked hard in language arts and social studies. Here is an overview of what we did:
Reading: Students are well into Independent Reading. They are keeping up with their reading logs and sharing their books with me during conferences. They talk with one another about their books and recommend books to others. We are learning about informational text structures - cause/effect, compare/contrast, sequence, problem/solution, description. We read articles in our Time For Kids magazines and identified with which text structure the author chose to write them. It's important to recognize text structure, as it gives us an idea of how to find the main idea of an article. We also looked at text features - graphs, maps, extra info boxes, photographs, captions - to learn more information about the topic in an article. Writing: Students learned to identify a noun and a verb. It sounds simple, but it's important to learn parts of speech so you can effectively and appropriately place them in a sentence! We developed a draft for an essay titled An Important Recess Rule. We write daily in our writing journals. Social Studies: Students groups presented their commercials advertising a particular region in Texas! The commercials were great, very persuasive, and very inventive! The groups had to come up with a gimmick, a slogan, a poster, and a commercial - they were all great! I think this group of kids just LOVES to act! Through the commercials, we all learned about each of the 4 major Texas regions - Coastal Plains, North Central Plains, Great Plains, and Mountains and Basins. We also greeted a new friend to our classroom - Rusty - a corn snake! He's from the AISD Science Center and will be with us for two weeks!
Students are really into a routine now. They come into the room, put their backpacks and lunches where they belong, read the Morning Message, and work on different assignments or read. We meet in morning circle where we continue to greet each other and share things like a favorite character from a novel or a new word they've learned recently. Today we started our SEL program (Social and Emotional Learning) and talked about empathy and respect. Look for homework they need to do with a parent (homeroom class only) which is due next Friday, the 9th. We gave a number of reading assessments this week to determine where kids are in reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, spelling, and fluency. We will use the IStation program regularly this year and I will be sending home IStation parent log in cards next week so that students can access the program from home. Over the past few years, I have seen IStation do wonders for some kids who need that extra support, as long as it's used routinely. We will also work with fluency partners to increase our word recognition skills in addition to reader's theater. The students will find wondrous words in their reading and the world around them starting next week, and we'll use them in various ways. If you have a chance to read with your child, that would be GREAT! Studies show that kids whose parents read with them increase both their reading fluency and just plain reading enjoyment. We only have so much time in school for independent reading, so the more your child can read at home, the better. We will have many conversations about where to read this year. I would like to see them make a habit of bringing a book everywhere they go so that they become what I like to call a WILD READER! Fourth grade students at Baldwin received on Friday or will get on Tuesday a free National Park Pass good from now until Aug. 31st of 2017! All 4th graders in the country have access to a free pass for them and their families. Several of my students last year used the pass and had a great time. If you visit a National Park, your child has an opportunity to do a presentation about the Park for social studies extra credit (one per nine weeks). Thank you for sending such wonderful kids! This week we got to know each other. Every morning in homeroom we greeted each other by name and with a handshake. I hope this makes all feel welcome. We will continue "morning meeting" throughout the year, building on our community cohesiveness. Next week we begin our PAW behavior system. There is a sheet in the Bee Binder that has Paws on it; hopefully your child can explain our system to you. But don't worry; we will go over it during Back to School on Sept. 15. The 4th grade team rewards good behavior with the opportunity to participate in Flex Friday - an extra half hour of recess in the afternoon - and with Brilliant Bobcat Day once a quarter. One of the aspects of this school year that I'm really excited about it the fact that Austin ISD is focusing on Independent Reading this year! This is the first step in the new district Literacy Plan, which will be rolled out over the next few years. I hope to instill a love for reading in all our students. We will "read wildly" this year! We will read a lot of different genres and will respond to our reading in different ways. I would LOVE every student to have a book bag this year. This can be a smallish bag with handles that your child can carry over the shoulder and that can be hung on the back of the chair. I hope that the kids can carry their bags to our class reading buddies (probably a 1st or 2nd grade class), outdoors, to the cafeteria, even out to recess. My goal is for all of our students to feel the enjoyment of really getting into a good book. Independent reading will not be graded or tested. We will do lots of discussing books - characters, themes, setting, author style, etc. If you can provide your child with a book bag as soon as possible, that would be great. I do have a friend who has a sewing business and is happy to take orders. Two bag examples are to the left. Available bag colors are purple, gray, navy, royal blue and red. The outside pockets can vary; just specify a pattern your child would like. They are $16.24 ($15 + tax). You can order them through me. But please know that any bag is great. You may have a smallish bag at home; please bring that one in. Kids have brought all kinds of bags this week! Hope you have a restful weekend and see you Monday! |
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