A Big Bite

 

It was a great week back from the Thanksgiving holiday and boy did it fly by!  On Friday morning, the students commented on how quickly the week had passed. :)We finished reading Mr. Popper's Penguins and will be celebrating this book next Wednesday with "Black and White Day."  Everyone worked on writing in response to reading as a skill in reading, and on making connections with author's craft in writer's workshop.  We made great progress planning our fiction stories and will begin the rough draft next week. Ms. Lynch, from the Franklin Food Pantry, came to school on Wednesday and spoke to all of the 4th graders about the FFP and what we can do as a community to help others.  We were surprised to learn that there are about 500 children in Franklin who don't have enough to eat; that is almost the same number of children as attend JFK!  It was a great way to kick off our new interactive read aloud, The Family Under the Bridge, by Natalie Savage Carlson.  In poetry workshop, we are learning about Robert Louis Stevenson and will be writing rhyming poems in the next few weeks.  It was exciting to learn that he was an author and a poet. Some of us will be looking for adapted versions of some of his classic works, Kidnapped and Treasure Island.  Everyone agreed that though he was different than Walt Whitman, he still was a very "cool guy." :) The decimal unit is complete in math and we will be moving on to fractions next.  The fraction unit is large and will take us until the end of January to complete. In social studies, we began our journey to Canada and learned about the Canadian flag.  Weather is the new unit of study in science and everyone is excited to learn about so many different weather topics.  We created "KWL," charts and discovered that there are MANY things  we want to learn about weather.  The students have finished their MixCraft projects with Mrs. MacMurray in the technology lab, click here to see the projects.  They are incredible!
New speeches have been assigned and Mrs. Marano is available for support before 8:40.  She is looking forward to helping anyone who wants extra tips on improving their speech before the 12/19 deadline.
On Monday, we will have the first of four programs by the Haffenreffer Museum.  This program will focus on archaeology and will set the stage for the next three programs about Native Americans of north America.  It will be very exciting.
Have a great weekend!
Mrs. Williams