A Big Bite

It was our first full week in a while and we filled every moment!  We kicked the week off with our 4th grade community meeting and we received a package from Antarctica that contained a stuffed penguin, a puzzle and a copy of Mr. Popper's Penguins by Florence and Richard Atwater.  Check out the big "reveal," in the video below.  

We are continuing to build classroom community by holding daily meetings and end of the week classroom meetings.  It continues to be a learning experience for everyone.  Ask your child about what happens at, "morning meeting," you may be surprised by what you learn. 

In reading, we are tracking character traits, answering thick and thin questions and using predicting as a strategy for monitoring comprehension as focus skills for this book.  We also had a great author visit from Bad Kitty author, Nick Bruel.  He was so funny and we learned all about how he creates a fiction story.  We will try his strategies when it is time for us to write fiction stories.  In writer's workshop we worked on creating strong leads and are ready to start drafting narratives.  We all completed rough drafts of list poem s in poetry workshop. 

Topic one in math, basic multiplication and division, wrapped up on Friday and we will be participating in centers on Monday before taking the topic test on Tuesday.  We  finished learning about maps and globes in social studies and participated in the first of four presentations about Native Americans with an interactive program presented by the Haffenreffer Museum from Brown University.  The archaeologists had a lot of fun digging for artifacts.  Our first mini weather unit is complete and we will take a test on weather instruments, the atmosphere, high and low pressure and the water cycle on November 2nd.  4th grade is fun,  full of excitement and learning!