Our Week In Review

What a busy week we have had in Room 24!  Even with the summery weather, we have accomplished quite a bit.

In Math, we have been working diligently to read and write large numbers and to review the place value system.  We have also learned the skills of rounding and of comparing two numbers.  Today we had a math quiz on these topics.  Next week we will review addition and subtraction and the children will learn a few different ways to solve these types of problems. When we finish with addition and subtraction, we will have a unit test on all of the concepts learned so far.  Your child will receive a study guide to use to help prepare for the test.

If your child is having some difficulty with place value or rounding, I am including a few videos from "Kahn Academy" with some information about place value and rounding.  This may be a good way to review these concepts.

    Place Value 1: Place Value 1

    Rounding Whole Numbers 1: Rounding Whole Numbers 1

In Reading we have been talking about the different genres of books.  We discussed the different clues to help children know what genre their book is.  This week, the children will be tracking GENRE on their reading logs for homework.  We have also been working on Narrative Elements in Reading. We spent some time talking about plot by reading two different books by Chris Van Allsburg.  We will continue this topic next week, along with learning about strategies that good readers use.  All book bags have been filled, and the children now have the responsibility to keep their bag filled.

Today we began our first engineering activity.  Students will be creating "Puff Mobiles" in cooperative groups.  Mr. Adams (Mrs. Adams' husband and an engineer) came to JFK this morning and talked to the whole fourth grade about the engineering process.  Mr. Adams showed us this video:

We learned about teamwork and we started to sketch some designs. We are so excited to start this project!

We also had a chance to share our "puzzle pieces" in front of the class.  This was an option for those who were interested.  We had already shared these pieces with our class in small groups, but we enjoyed hearing about each other in the big group!