This week in Math we have been continuing our work with patterns. We have been working on identifying and describing patterns that can be found both in numbers and in the world around us. Earlier in the week, we hunted for patterns around the school. This lead to an inquiry surrounding the question “What is a pattern?”. Yesterday students worked on examining growth patterns through the Fibonacci Sequence as well as various pictures. Students will continue to examine and unravel patterns over the next few weeks. Students have continued to improve and hone their observation and description skills this week in science. We continued our work on observational drawing through an exercise where students were asked to draw only the negative space in a still life picture of fruit. This challenged to students to draw what they saw in front of them instead of what they “saw in their mind” and thought the drawing should look like. Over the next few weeks students will be beginning their first inquiry project where students will be asked to use scientific method to communicate their questions observations and discoveries so that they can identify new connections. In humanities this week fourth graders inquired into what makes up our identities. We began by reflecting on what we already know about what makes up who we are; including things like hair and eye color, personality, unique features, and family genetics. To further our perspectives, we read the book “Chrysanthemum” by Kevin Henkes looking for themes of identity within the story. This prompted conversation around how our names are special and unique to who we are as individuals. Students then began a brainstorming a mind-map of ideas answering the question: What do I know about my name? Students were given prompts to help generate ideas about spelling, pronunciation, feelings, history, and nicknames etc. Fourth graders then shared in groups and worked together to determine categories for their mind-map ideas. Common category themes that came up were family, pronunciation, popularity, nicknames, and feelings. The purpose for breaking our ideas into categories is to help students organize their work for the next steps in our inquiry. We hope that you can participate in our “Parents as Partners” activity over the weekend and write one note about their name on a sticky for your child to add to their piece of writing. Our first writing focus this term is determining juicy words in writing and making purposeful word choices. We recalled some of the word choices used in Chrysanthemum and discussed how word choice can enhance writing and storytelling. Later in the week we continued to focus on developing our writing skills. Students were introduced to the idea around Goldilocks Zones of Writing: too hot, too cold, and just right. Students were challenged to try writing “just right” sentences of their own. Here is an example we used in class: HOT: The small stinky messy disgusting bedroom had old moldy green socks on the shaggy carpet. JUST RIGHT: The messy bedroom was stinky from the rotting socks on the floor. COLD: The room was messy. Next week we will continue pre-writing and work on putting together our best paragraphs explaining how names connect to identity. Fourth graders were also introduced to the Zones of Regulation this week! We are excited to continue building strategies for staying balanced, happy, and ready to learn.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
June 2017
Categories |