Hello all,
What a week! Some days flew by... others crawled by slower than a snail. But, we made it and now we can all enjoy a relaxing 3 day weekend!
Math
In math, we continued our work with digits, value, and place value. We compared and ordered numbers up to the hundred billions place in a series of "stations" throughout the week. Kids played games, practiced questions on the computer, solved math puzzles and practiced doing more traditional problems out of the books. This is a routine I like to use in math a lot. The kids were very engaged throughout and got to practice a skill in many different contexts. We also worked on rounding number to the hundred thousands place, always a tough skill. In fact, on our pre-test only 5% of my students got the rounding questions correct! Many students come to 4th grade heavily dependent on "less than 4 round down, equal to or more than 5, round up" trick.... this is not always best practice. I focused more on what rounding ACTUALLY is, the placement of a number on a number line. The kids used 4 steps to determine if the number is closer to any given place-value. We practiced this skill ALOT, first with me on the board and then eventually with partners using "sage and scribe". Ask your kids about it! It was a lot of fun and it was great to see students succeed more frequently using this method.
Next week: I will introduce decimals (tenths and hundredths).
Science
We started the week discussing lab safety and sent home safety contracts in preparation for our first investigation. Thank you for reviewing these rules with your child. Together we will hold them accountable for their choices during science investigations and promote the safest learning environment possible. After safety, we reviewed science tools and created a glossary of common tools in our science journals. Lastly, we completed our first investigation! We reviewed the steps of scientific inquiry by investigating the reaction time of our dominant hand vs our non-dominant hand. My homeroom needs to complete their claim and evidence and write their conclusions still... so we will catch up to Dawson's class next week!
Next week: I will introduce matter.
Homeroom:
There are a few schedule changes to be aware of.... 4th grade decided to change FLEX Friday time to 11:30 - 12:00 instead of 10:45 - 11:15. Also, Ms. Ashley, our technology queen, has revamped our computer lab schedules, so our new times are Mondays, 10:45 - 11:30 and 11:30 - 12:15 (Mrs. Dawson and I share these slots). I will print updated schedules for the kids Tuesday and they will keep them in their BEE binders.
Don't forget Back to School Night Sept. 17! I would love to have everyone in attendance!
Let me know if you have any questions! Have a safe weekend!
What a week! Some days flew by... others crawled by slower than a snail. But, we made it and now we can all enjoy a relaxing 3 day weekend!
Math
In math, we continued our work with digits, value, and place value. We compared and ordered numbers up to the hundred billions place in a series of "stations" throughout the week. Kids played games, practiced questions on the computer, solved math puzzles and practiced doing more traditional problems out of the books. This is a routine I like to use in math a lot. The kids were very engaged throughout and got to practice a skill in many different contexts. We also worked on rounding number to the hundred thousands place, always a tough skill. In fact, on our pre-test only 5% of my students got the rounding questions correct! Many students come to 4th grade heavily dependent on "less than 4 round down, equal to or more than 5, round up" trick.... this is not always best practice. I focused more on what rounding ACTUALLY is, the placement of a number on a number line. The kids used 4 steps to determine if the number is closer to any given place-value. We practiced this skill ALOT, first with me on the board and then eventually with partners using "sage and scribe". Ask your kids about it! It was a lot of fun and it was great to see students succeed more frequently using this method.
Next week: I will introduce decimals (tenths and hundredths).
Science
We started the week discussing lab safety and sent home safety contracts in preparation for our first investigation. Thank you for reviewing these rules with your child. Together we will hold them accountable for their choices during science investigations and promote the safest learning environment possible. After safety, we reviewed science tools and created a glossary of common tools in our science journals. Lastly, we completed our first investigation! We reviewed the steps of scientific inquiry by investigating the reaction time of our dominant hand vs our non-dominant hand. My homeroom needs to complete their claim and evidence and write their conclusions still... so we will catch up to Dawson's class next week!
Next week: I will introduce matter.
Homeroom:
There are a few schedule changes to be aware of.... 4th grade decided to change FLEX Friday time to 11:30 - 12:00 instead of 10:45 - 11:15. Also, Ms. Ashley, our technology queen, has revamped our computer lab schedules, so our new times are Mondays, 10:45 - 11:30 and 11:30 - 12:15 (Mrs. Dawson and I share these slots). I will print updated schedules for the kids Tuesday and they will keep them in their BEE binders.
Don't forget Back to School Night Sept. 17! I would love to have everyone in attendance!
Let me know if you have any questions! Have a safe weekend!