It's a gray and gloomy Friday, but we have had a lot of fun in the classroom with our pajamas and stuffies and blankets! I even wore my bathrobe over my clothes most of the day, and it was cozy! The class was incredibly quiet and focused during both reading and writing today -- quite a feat on a Friday!

Here's the scoop:

Math this week was challenging! We moved from multiplication into division, and this always causes some anxiety! Starting yesterday, we learned about division with remainders, and that is another level of difficulty as well. It's hard to figure out the remainder, and then it's even harder to figure out how to "deal with" the remainder depending on the story context. For example, when dividing 44 by 8, the mathematical answer is 5R4, but if the story problem asks how 8 friends can share 44 crackers, you can break the crackers in half so each gets 5 1/2! This is new thinking, and we WILL all get it eventually! I try really hard not to move on until everyone feels ready, so we will take our time.

We are finishing up our first writing unit, and many of the students are sad about this! I have explained that all writers have deadlines, and that they can continue to work on their pieces from home or during our occasional free writing times. Today we learned about endings and how it is important to make sure our loose ends are tied up. Next week we will do some revising and then some editing. We will have a publishing party on Friday. I miss the days when I could invite parents to join us!

We are also finishing up our reading unit, and we will move onto non-fiction books after vacation. Today we learned about debatable ideas and how readers can debate with themselves while they are reading. The focus of our reading in Grade 4 is all about developing ideas as we read. As the students are reading, I am doing some assessments so I can give you all information about your children's decoding and comprehension skills soon!

This week the students each researched an animal and made and presented a poster about the animal's special features  -- or its body structures and their functions. After vacation, we will learn about some human organs and their functions as well.

During our social studies time, many heavy and mature issues have come up as we read picture books about a variety of topics related to race and justice. The students have brought up the notion of systemic racism, sexism, diversity, and equity. We have started SLOWLY discussing some of these issues in a measured and nonjudgmental way. Your children may come home with questions on their minds as we tackle these issues when they come up!

This week we learned 4 new vocabulary words -- all of which can be seen in our video dictionary on the google classroom. The words are livid, implore, elated, and blatant. Good luck fitting these into your dinner time conversations!

I hope you all enjoy a restful weekend. Stay safe and healthy!

 Happy Sunny Friday!  This weather is super exciting, especially after the exciting snow from earlier in the week.... Let me just say that our moods have definitely been affected by our weather -- lots of excitement all around!  It has been really nice to have our windows open and be outside the past few days.

Here's the brief rundown:

In math, we continue working on 1-digit by 2-digit multiplication.  The focus is to break the larger number into smaller chunks, either using a model (an array) or equations. I gave an exit ticket this week and was pleased with the results. Next week we will move onto division, which is a little tricky at first. We'll be mastering long division before we know it!

We have not done a lot of new work in literacy this week since we had Tuesday off and focus on math on Wednesdays. The students are still reading, writing me letters, thinking about the characters, and writing their first drafts of their narrative stories. Next week we will focus on debating to develop rich ideas and also on revising our stories to make them even better.

We have started having phonics instruction twice a week. One group is working on suffix rules (doubling consonants and dropping silent e) while the other group is reviewing/learning a variety of patterns for spelling long vowel sounds.  We have learned about patterns for long a and long e, and we will do long o and long i next week.  I'm excited about this work and think it will help the students as spellers AND as readers!

We made terrariums today!  Thank you to the parents who bought supplies for us!  Most of the students put 2 plants into their terrariums, but some chose to only put in one plant. They are all watered and ready to be put in a sunny location. They shouldn't need to be watered very often.  I ordered some fun little figurines to put in them, but they have not arrived yet. I will send the figurines home when they arrive. Our study of plants is over, but we have moved onto learning about the interesting structures of various animals and their functions. Stay tuned!

Don't forget to check out the video dictionary from time to time so you can see our new vocabulary words. This week we only had 1 new word -- blatant. I hope you can find ways to incorporate it around your dinner table!

Original Works and order forms are coming home today. I believe you all got directions for how to order in an email. Let me know if you have questions.

I am so enjoying this class! They are curious and engaged and excited about learning. We laugh a lot each day, and they make give me hope for the future of our planet!

I hope you all enjoy this sunny weekend!