Hello families!

 

Last week we kicked off our inquiry unit where we will be using the text Areli Is a Dreamer to ask questions, investigate our questions, and research to find answers. We started our unit with a study of texts as windows and mirrors (ask students to explain this to you if you are not familiar!). We will continued our research on Greek Roots, and each student has an assigned novel group for novel study. Our novels this quarter are: Esperanza Rising, Mr. Lemoncello's Library, A Wrinkle in Time, The Name of This Book is Secret, and The One and Only Ivan.

 

We will be starting a new project that will take place every Friday! Students have homework related to this project! Please click here for a letter from me about this.

 

For a list of Language Arts resources and information, including our First Chapter Friday list, click here.

Hello!

 

This week in Language Arts we will be drafting and creating our own stories using what we've learned about narrative elements, editing, revising, and drafting. 

 

As we wrap up the quarter, we'll be wrapping up fiction for the time being as we move into investigating different types of texts next quarter.

 

Hello families!

 

This week in Language Arts, we are working on writing responses to short stories. We are focusing on theme, cause and effect, main idea and supporting details. We will be practicing citing evidence in our responses and thinking about choices that authors make and WHY they make them.

 

To brush up on our typing skills, we are typing the final project from our personal narratives this week as well.

 

This is all getting us ready for next week, when we will be constructing short stories of our own and considering the important elements of story in our writing. I'm excited for students to share these with you!

 

Additionally, we have started a new weekly activity called "first chapter Friday" where I read one chapter of a novel I think your students would love. The first line from the text is posted on my wall on Monday, and students have all week to get excited about what we'll be reading on Friday. I have copies of some of these novels at school that they can read, but they have requested a list be sent home so you can find these texts for them as well. The list is HERE and will be updated weekly after we read our text for the week.

Hello families!

This week in language arts, we will be starting our unit on short stories and creative writing. We will also be starting a study of Greek and Latin roots, which supports readers in understanding more complex words, and helps students develop spelling and vocabulary skills. To support students at home you can ask about Greek and Latin root words and have them explain what they are and why they are helpful. Spending a little time every night writing in addition to their nightly reading will also support with student growth and reading and writing!

Hello families!

 

I hope you have a fabulous long weekend!

 

This upcoming week we will be writing our final personal narratives to wrap up this unit. We will also be working on cause and effect relationships, compare and contrast, and setting goals to improve and elevate our writing. 

 

As always, you can help at home by making sure students read nightly, and ideally, writing nightly! 

 

Please reach out with any questions or concerns! 

Happy fourth week of school!

 

We will be wrapping up the first month of school by finishing our memory twist personal narratives and starting our novel studies. Today in class we had a "Starbooks" party, where we all got to "taste" the books we'll be reading for our first in class novels. Students ranked their choices 1-5 and they'll be finding out what they're reading on Monday.

 

Coming up next week, we'll be finalizing our personal narrative essays. We will make goals for ourselves as writers based on our essay feedback, and we will read several strong examples of personal narratives as we prepare to write our own final personal narratives at the end of our unit. In small groups, we'll be starting to discuss writing strategies that we can apply to our own writing.

 

How can you help at home? Make time for reading and writing every day!

Students, click here to go to the assessment:

 

 

Log in with the username and password I gave you.

Hello families!

 

This week we are diving into fourth grade content as we start writing personal narratives. On Friday the 18th, we created a "river of rocks" where students wrote down their favorite memories, important people and places, and inspiring ideas. We'll return to this over the next few weeks as we write and read personal narrative in class.

 

As always, I strongly encourage reading at home for at least 15 minutes a night and ideally 30. Next week in class we will be spending time choosing independent novels for students to read during our Choice Time in class. I recommend that they have a text they are reading at home. For a list of texts I recommend to this class, click here (and please take a look at the text to make sure it is content that you are comfortable with! Every family is different.)

 

We will also be working through grammar and structure in both whole and small group lessons. I've noticed that while many students in our class are strong writers, many are also struggling to write full paragraphs. We're working in class on building writing stamina! You can help at home by adding some writing in. I would recommend that this writing be "joy writing", writing just for the fun of it. They can write stories, journals, recipes-- getting their writing brains working is a great first step to support in launching the year. For a list of writing prompts for fourth graders, click here.

 

I'm so excited about all the fun learning we will get to do this year! Please reach out with any questions, and I'll look forward to working with you and your student.

This week in Language Arts we will be reviewing our third grade skills and starting some writing projects. 

 

Our main focus this week will be grammar skills and writing structure! Going back to basics is so important at the beginning of the year, and you can help at home by making sure that your scholar is reading at least 15 minutes a night (30 if possible) and asking them questions about what they read. Asking lots of questions about what the text was about, what the characters might be thinking, and what they predict will happen next will help our fourth graders start to think more deeply about making connections within texts. If you want to do a little extra, talking about parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives) would also be a great thing to work in to your day. You could use something like flashcards, or just ask, “is that a noun/verb/etc?”

 

I’m so excited to get started with our school year! We will always be reading in this class, and our first class book will be “the Bookwanderers”, which we will be reading as a whole group.