A4 Updates: September 2016

Greetings Again!

It's hard to believe another two weeks have passed. The year is definitely feeling underway.

Thank you to all who were able to come out for Go-To-School-Night. It's always great to see you face to face and share a day in the life of your child.

Please keep those Fall Parent Reflections coming - they are super helpful to gain insight and to communicate your child's needs. Remember, they are due by the end of the month (Friday). So far, I only have about half of them.

Don't forget about our upcoming conferences on Oct. 20 & 21. If you need to change your time, the document is still open. Please feel free to choose a different opening, or personally contact another classmate family to make an exchange.

In these opening weeks of math, we have spent time reacquainting ourselves with multiplication. Through the use of arrays, we continue to explore the concept of multiplication, while enhancing our automaticity of facts. We have also been developing our mathematical vocabulary: factors, product, multiples, composite, prime, commutative, etc.

I have had the wonderful opportunity of reading with each child to assess their just right guided reading zones. This has helped me to check in with your child about his/her reading habits, oral expression, accuracy, rate and comprehension. This week we are starting our book groups. These groups will meet during our "SQUIRT & Work" time.

As we move forward in our writing, we are ready to move from generating ideas, into choosing an idea for our personal narrative. Over the next few weeks we will choose our topic and begin planning and structuring our writing. Our Writer's Workshop framework starts with a mini-lesson where I teach the kids a strategy to use. Next, the kids work for 20 - 30 minutes of writing time, often attempting that kiss or strategy. Our final minutes are spent sharing out with one another. Sometimes they will share with the whole class, or a neighbor. We celebrate our learnings and generate energy for our next sessions.

Lately we have been spending time bringing our SS and Science study together as we explore why the Earth looks the way it does and how it effects our land and mapping. Discussing and learning about the physical characteristics of our planet, including plate tectonics, and the land and water features we use in mapping, we are off to a great start. This will lead us into a science study about waves and the transfer of energy as well as learning about landforms.

Please read the letter I forwarded regarding keyboarding.

I hope you all had a lovely weekend and have had a nice start to this week.

Here are some fun pictures:

RECESS!

Array Cards for Multiplication Facts

Picture Day

Strong Feelings to Enhance our Writing

Welcome to 4th Grade and the "A - 4" BLOG! (Amaral - 4th Grade)

We are off to a great start and are looking forward to a great year in Room 135!
We like to call ourselves the "A-4's."

I will use this BLOG venue as a Newsletter to keep you up to date on what's happening, but I will also use email to share important information.

On this BLOG, please be sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom, as I will share pictures, but often add text information along the way.

These past two weeks have gone by so quickly, but I am really feeling good about our group - we are already really coming together. The first week was mostly about getting to know one another. So many of us have been here since Kindergarten or 1st, but this year we have two new friends. Please join me in welcoming Avery Pratt and Jake Hollack. Avery has moved here from Connecticut and Jake has come to us from Iowa. They have both jumped right into Hubbard Woods and have great energy to share!

Last week we worked on sharing more about ourselves. Playing games like "Classmate Bingo", "Find-a-Mate", "Classroom Treasure Hunt" and the sharing of "Me Bags" has helped us beat the heat and ease back into the school year and help us to become more comfortable with our surroundings and each other.

Fourth grade as a whole, likes to get together often. We have been meeting out at Mann Park to play some interactive cooperative games. The focus of these activities have been to work with others toward a common goal. "Play Hard, Play Fair, Everybody Wins!" Eventually we will take our gatherings indoor and create small groups consisting of a mixture of members from each of the three 4th grade classrooms. These small groups of 3 or 4 will work on SS and Science activities. These sessions are called "Cooperatives". You will hear more about this time as the year moves forward.

Of course, a few assessments in Math, Writing, Reading and Spelling help me to get to know my class. Not only do beginning year assessments help me to see where each child is, but its a great baseline for comparisons of growth. One of the assessment tools used this week was the MAP, the computerized program that the district has chosen to replace the STAR. We will be using this program to monitor progress in Math and Reading. We are all still learning more about the MAP and how we can best utilize the information we receive from it. I'm sure there will be more information to come.

We jumped right into our first unit in math, in which we are working with arrays to build more flexible thinking around multiplication and factors. This helps bring them up to speed from where they left off in 3rd grade and starts building a deeper understanding of multiplication that will be beneficial all year long. We even began some "Fast Fact" practice to help with our automaticity.

Beginning Monday, you will see the PURPLE HOMEWORK FOLDER and Student Planner coming home. I am asking for parent signatures DAILY on the Student planner. The purple folder and student planner will be going back and forth to school most Mondays - Thursdays. On Fridays, the ORANGE FRIDAY FOLDER will be coming home with papers from the week's work. Some work is to stay at home, while any 3-hole punched work will need to return to school to be kept in their portfolio.

I will be sending out a Google Document to sign up for Conferences coming up in October. I will also be emailing a link to an INTAKE form. I ask that you fill those out and return to me by Oct. 1st.

I will be going over all of this with the kids next week, and also at "Go-To-School-Night" on Thursday, Sept. 15th. I hope to see you all there!

Hope you are all hearing good things about 4th grade. I am very excited about this group and I'm looking forward to a fun and busy year with them all.

Best,
Joanna Amaral

Getting to know you games