We began the week celebrating Chinese New Year. This is the year of the snake! We made snakes in class, and discussed which animal represented the year we were born. Mrs. Merten is the rooster! The children were split between two animals. Ask your child which animal represents their birth year. You can also check that out here.
In reading, we have continued to read the adventure story, Snow Treasure by Marie McSwiggan. This story is excited because the adventurous characters are about our age! We continue to work on summaries and literary elements using this book.
In writing, we are working to finish up our essays. After vacation, we will finish these, and then we will complete one last personal narrative before we have to take the writing part of the MCAS on March 19th. Mrs. Merten is sure we will be ready!
In math, we wrapped up the second part of our fraction unit ~ adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers. Although this new concept was a little challenging, we worked hard, and did and AWESOME job on our assessment! Mrs. Merten and Miss Boulay helped us to create a new math "journal" that we can bring back and forth to school to use as a reference.
In science, we have continued to work on different aspects of weather, and in social studies we are working on our unit about the Northeast. We will have an assessment in social studies on the Friday we return after vacation. We took a study guide home on Friday. Mrs. Merten also told us about a fun activity we will be doing using Skype, talking to other fourth grade students around the US. We will have our first Mystery State meeting on March 8th with a classroom from somewhere in the Northeast!
On Thursday, the entire fourth grade danced our way into school, doing the Cupid Shuffle. This is an annual fourth grade tradition, and such a fun way to get moving on Valentine's Day! You can see us dancing in the video below.
On Thursday, we also enjoyed our party in a bag, and shared Valentines. We read a short myth about Cupid, and were surprised that we didn't know as much about him as we had thought.
Friday, we celebrated Winter Wonderland Day by wearing our PJs and slippers to school. We learned a cool way to cut out snowflakes, and will use the snowflakes in poetry next week.
From the Teacher's Desk
The time between the first of the year and February vacation seemed to fly by! We have been working hard at learning new concepts. We have started a math journal for the children to bring back and forth to school, to use as a reference. This will allow students (and parents) to have a reference when doing homework and/or preparing for tests. This will be a great supplement to our Everyday Mathematics Student Reference Book (SRB), which the children have been using this year. Some of the new concepts we are learning this year do not have enough information in that text. We will use this throughout our next unit on measurement.
I am very excited about our Skyping project. We will be "meeting" with different fourth grade (and one third grade) classes from across the US, to participate in a "mystery state" activity. We will ask the students questions about their state and then try to guess the state that they're from, and then we will answer questions about Massachusetts and they'll guess our state. We will meet our first group of students in a few weeks.
