Our Week In Review

We began our week with a snow day, and we squeezed 5 days of learning into our 4 days. We were BUSY!

On Tuesday, Mrs. Silvia of the Haffenreffer Museum was at JFK to teach our fourth graders about the Native Americans of the Plains.  We are thankful to the Kennedy PCC for funding such an amazing opportunity.

In math we continued to learn about fractions and decimals, and students are becoming more fluent with this. We will continue our learning on Monday, and then review for our assessment on Tuesday.  The test is scheduled for Wednesday and students brought home a study guide on Thursday.

During ELA, we are working on writing the next chapter to our last Interactive Read Aloud, Snow Treasure, by Marie McSwiggan.  Students are working in partnerships to write this chapter using the writing style of the original author, while adding their own voices to their writing.  We can't wait to share our writing! This will continue through next week.  We also have been reading about real life heroes, and connecting that reading to our fictional reading. Next week we will continue this, and begin to read some myths.

We participated in a webinar with Cressida Cowell, author of the How to Train your Dragon series.She shared how she gets ideas about writing, and about the importance of creativity.

We also continue to give book talks!  Please encourage your child to give a book talk during the third term.

We enjoyed dressing up for Read Across America Day! Check out our tweets in the right panel. Mrs. Merten tried to tag as many authors as possible. Stay tuned!

FROM THE TEACHER'S DESK -WASHINGTON, D.C. PROJECT UPDATE:

• I am very proud of the hard work done by our students.  Many students have been using the suggested schedule to keep up with this project, and they are doing a great job!  Students have been allowed to share their drawings with the class as well.  Using this calendar will make this project feel less overwhelming when the due date (3/19) gets closer.
• Students spent 30-60 minutes each day working on their research this week (as well as some time last week).  This was modeled, and students were given the option  of copying the notes for one monument (Washington Monument).  We worked at reading books and websites and then writing down facts from the reading.  This allows the students to take their notes and write sentences in their own words. Students used the safe search kiddle.co to find their facts, as well as links from our blog. Please know that I have discouraged the use of google for searching for 2 reasons.  First it isn't always "kid friendly" and second, the answer may just pop up without the students having to read for information.  Google is an amazing tool, however for this project our goal is to practice reading nonfiction and putting it into our own words. Some students met with a teacher during the week to ask questions/talk about research.  If your child would like to meet with a teacher to ask questions about his /her research, please encourage him/her to do so in the morning after unpacking. There is no more specific time designated at school for this project.
• The next step for students is to take their notes and to write sentences using their notes. They need to have 3 bulleted facts for each monument.  These must be one or more sentences sharing information.  We have discussed this in class multiple times. Students may print this or hand write.  They need to finish illustrations and locate the monuments on the map and then print out their resource page (we worked on this at school).
• This project is due 3/19.