Hi Families,

I am so proud of this class for all their hard work this week, especially during the SBAC testing. They were focused and tried their hardest, and my heart swelled watching them being so earnest! The SBAC testing is long and arduous, and they rocked it out of the park!  The language arts portion is done, and we move onto math next week.  Halfway through!

I have tried to keep our academics a little more casual this week so that their brains didn't get fried, but we did do some work. In math, we worked hard on the distinction between division story problems and multiplication story problems, and what strategies can be used to figure out which is which. This class is really getting good at using a variety of strategies to solve division problems -- most of the small errors they make are calculation errors (not knowing their basic multiplication facts) and not about conceptual understanding. I am so happy with the progress they have made!

In reading, we are still working in our book groups and trying to practice writing in our notebooks. I will really push them on this over the next few weeks because I know it will be an expectation in 5th grade. I am hoping a few weeks of practice will show them that it isn't so bad!  I have started doing my final reading assessments, and it makes me smile to see the growth.

We continue to work on our graphic novels/narratives during writing time. I am loving some of the drawings and story ideas I am seeing, and I can tell the students are  super excited about their writing! I haven't decided how I will celebrate this unit yet, but we will manage to celebrate somehow!

Here are a few important pieces of information:

• On Monday, we will be taking a walk with Mr. Bouchard down to the park behind the Red Mill. This will be a fun and informative way to finish up our geology unit. We will leave school at around 9:00 and return in time for recess at 11:00. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns about this.
• You will be receiving a communication about our year-end celebration from the office later today (I think!) We are having our 4th grade celebration at Mills Riverside Park on June 11. We will take the bus over to the park at about 11:30. All of the 4th graders will be able to enjoy a fun, unstructured play time together (with the pods mixing, masked) until lunch time. We will have a picnic lunch. Then, we will have our annual Memory Book ceremony, during which each student will get a Memory Book from Mrs. Graf. Parents are invited to join us for the ceremony (masked and distanced, of course!) at 1:30. We will board the buses right after the ceremony to head back to JES in time for dismissal. If you attend, you can take your child directly home with you if you'd like. I wish we could do more to celebrate these wonderful students, and I especially wish we could invite all of you to join us for the entire event, but it will be a really fun day and I know they will enjoy themselves. Our last day of school is the following Monday (June 14) and we will spend that day just enjoying each other's company and cleaning out our desks. Then it will be time to say goodbye....

I think that's it for this week. As always, reach out if you have questions or concerns. Enjoy the weekend!

 What a beautiful day! We enjoyed Taiko drumming outdoors first thing this morning and then had lunch outside this afternoon. It's been a struggle to get everyone outdoors regularly with the rainy, cold weather. Today made it possible and we took full advantage!

Academics this week were simple: We read our books and worked HARD to write about our reading in our notebooks. We started drafting our last narrative (graphic novels for most) and we practiced division over and over and over again!  We have learned and reviewed three or four different strategies for long division, and now we just need lots of practice. Ask your child to show you how she or he would solve 1,448 divided by 4!  Ask how s/he will know if there is a remainder or not. You'll be amazed at the skill and understanding!

The big topics this week have been Taiko, SBAC, and the track meet. It seemed like everyone really enjoyed the drumming. Sensei Stuart showed them a lot of cool drumming techniques. He also taught them the importance of self-control and respect for the sensei, or teacher. It was a wonderful opportunity and I wish we could have had more of it! The track meet was also really successful. The weather was perfect, and I really enjoyed seeing all of the students cheering each other on in a healthy, inclusive way. A few were disappointed in their own performance, but in the end they realized that the fun outweighed the disappointment.

SBAC testing starts on Tuesday morning. We will do the ELA (Reading/Writing) first. The first session is more short answer and reading for comprehension. The second session involves lots of reading and writing. We practiced this one today, and I tried my best to assure the class that even though they need to try their best, this test is just a snapshot of ONE moment in time! For equity reasons, I am going to have all the students use school-issued headphones for the testing. If you child has fancy headphones from home, please remind them that they can't use those for SBAC testing.  Feel free to reach out with any questions or concerns about the SBAC testing.

I think that's it for this week! We are busy planning a fun celebration for the end of the year. It looks like parents may be able to join, from a distance, for part of this celebration, although details and guidance change regularly. I'll give you more information as I get it!

I hope you all enjoy the lovely weather this weekend!

Happy sunny Friday! I have counted the days, and there are only 25 school days left. Wow. We are making it through this crazy year!

Academics this week have been pretty simple -- here's the rundown:

Math: We have moved from multiplication with large numbers into division strategies. Our work mostly focuses on how to "partition" the larger number into groups, always remembering to use multiples of 10 and 100 to partition large chunks at a time. I use the metaphor or moving 1,000 jellybeans from a vat into 6 bags. I could do it one at a time, or I could scoop 100 jellybeans at once, making the job more efficient and easier! This takes practice, and we are definitely not done yet.  But this is our last math unit, so we are taking our time.

Reading: The students have all chosen a new book group book, and the groups met once this week to hammer out some details. They discussed how many pages to read each day, what sorts of questions or topics they want to discuss, what expectations they have of their group members in terms of notetaking, etc. I am trying to give them a lot of space and time to take responsibility for these decisions since they are ALMOST 5th GRADERS!

Writing: I have enjoyed holding the students back this week (I say I am "torturing them" and I love hearing the collective groan...) making them do a lot of pre-planning for their final narrative piece. They are planning the plot, the problems their characters will encounter, the traits their characters have, and the way their stories will begin and end. Today we talked about the importance of a "backstory" which guides the choices our characters make. They are EAGER to get going, and I will let them start their actual drafting on Monday. They are like horses waiting to leave the gate at a rodeo!

Science: We finished up our energy unit today. The main focus here was on stored energy, whether in a rubber band that gets twisted or a hill that a marble rolls down. It was fun to see them work together (briefly) in groups to test some marbles and tracks. The concept was simple, but the learning was fun! Next week we will begin our final science unit about geology.

There is A LOT going on next week! Here's a brief schedule with some details:

Monday and Tuesday: Spring photos. The students are allowed to bring a prop that shows who they are, what hobbies they have, etc. I can't guarantee which day they will have their turn, so it would be a good idea to have the prop here on Monday and leave it here overnight if they don't get their turn that day. If you have questions about props, please contact Ms. Erica.

Monday: TAIKO Drummers will be here! We will see them perform Monday morning.Then our 2 PE periods next week will be spent learning how to drum!

Thursday: Track meet. I believe Mr. Steinman sent you all a letter about this. It should be a fun day. Think SUN!

In between, we will continue learning, reading, writing, and do 2 SBAC practice tests. We will be BUSY!

I think that's everything. Thank you all for the kind cards and gifts and flowers for Teacher Appreciation Week. I appreciate our partnerships! 

Have a wonderful weekend.

 Hello! It's hard to believe we just had a vacation -- once we are back in the classroom, it feels like we never left. We have worked hard this week, and we have 6 more weeks to go. I can't believe that the time is going by so fast.

Here's a quick rundown on the week:

Math -- We are still working on multiplying and dividing large numbers. The students ALL have good and efficient strategies for solving multiplication problems, and I am really excited about that. The bigger issue is that many of them still don't know their math facts, and that makes their answer incorrect despite the strategy being efficient. I know that memorizing your math facts is BORING, but I highly recommend that they all find ways to get those facts into their memories so they can access them fluently when necessary.  We just circled back to division with large numbers today. We are solving problems like this:

The apple orchard picked 1,548 apples. They can put 6 apples in each bag. How many bags of apples can they fill?

Here's how we solved it today, after asking if they could fill 100. How about 1,000? How about 200?

6 X 100 = 600

6 X 200 = 1,200

6 X 50 = 300

6 X 8 = 48

6 X 255 = 1,548

So the answer is 258 bags with one apple left over. We are working to use what we know about the magical 10 and 100. If we can multiply something by 10, then we can multiply it by 5 by halving it. Then we can multiply it by 15!

Reading -- We are getting ready to launch our final unit of the year, which will be a genre-based book group unit. The students will get to choose what genre they want to read, and then they will read with friends, jot their ideas, and get together to have discussions. I think they will enjoy this, and it will give them more practice with coming up with IDEAS about characters.

Writing-- We finished our essay unit this week! I'm impressed with the literary essays the class wrote, and particularly with their ability to find and use quotes to prove their opinions. Good for them! Today we did our final assessment, and I am looking forward to reading their essays over the weekend.

Science-- We have started the second and final bend of our energy unit. This unit is all about stored energy. We are making a variety of fun manipulatives that use rubber bands to store energy. Next week we will try out the rubber band roller cars we made today, and we will also use "bumper coasters" and marbles to learn about energy transfer. I hope the rain lets up so we can do some of this outdoors!

I was out yesterday for a medical appointment, and I will be out again on Monday for a personal day. I am never out so often, and I apologize for the 2 days so close together. I look forward to seeing the class on Tiesday.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

Happy Friday! And happy vacation! We are all certainly ready for a little break. This class has worked hard all week, and they are ready to rest and play. Here's the rundown for the week:

Math: This week we continued practicing a variety of strategies for solving double digit multiplication problems. We added a new strategy, which the class named "landmarking." This means changing one number to an easier number before multiplying, then compensating by adding or subtracting. Here is an example:  22 X 18 can be changed to 20 X 1 8 (because we all know how to multiply by 10, and therefore by 20!) 20 X 18 = 360. Then we need to compensate by adding in the final two groups of 18, so 22 X 18= 396. This is tricky for some, but fortunately math is flexible and we all find the strategies that work best for us!  We also learned to solve 4-digit by 1-digit multiplication problems. For this, we simply use expanded notation and multiply each part separately. Ask your children to show you an example!

Reading: We finished up the week by reading our choice books and jotting ideas about our reading. This class really enjoys reading, and I can always count on them to be totally focused during reading time. I hope they will read over vacation!

Writing: We are still working on our literary essays. I was hoping to finish up this week, but I think we need one more week after vacation to get completely finished. This week, the class learned how to select the best quotes from their books to prove the points they are trying to make in their essays. Providing evidence for your thinking is a critical writing skill, and really a critical life skill as well!

Social Studies: We finished our very quick unit about Vermont's geography, and I am impressed with how much this class learned! They all know where the major mountains and rivers are located, and they can label many important landmarks on the Vermont map! 

Our new vocabulary words this week were ornate, jovial, jubilant, and versatile. Unfortunately, they didn't all make it into the visual dictionary, but that is okay! You can use them at home, and that will make a huge difference. I caught a few students using jovial in their essays, and I was jubilant!

I hope you all enjoy a wonderful week with your children. I will miss them!

 Hi Families,

What a gift of nice weather we have had the past few days! I have tried to get us outdoors as much as possible. Between all the supplies we need and all the insect life that scares some people, it has been a bit of a challenge, but we have persevered!

Here's the rundown on the week:

Math -- We are fully involved in our final  multiplication and division unit. In this unit, students learn a variety of strategies for double digit multiplication and division with larger numbers. Here is a chart that shows the strategies we have learned. so far. As you can see, we don't teach the standard algorithm that we all learned when we were in school. Instead, we teach the students to think about how to use their multiples of 10 to solve these equations. It seems like it's much harder, but it really gets at their understanding of place value. They are getting it!

Writing -- we have been working hard on our literary essays. This means we have discussed what that even means, seen a sample of one, and worked on coming up with a thesis to write about. Some students are writing about picture books (which I highly recommend because it's much easier to find quotes!) while others are writing about chapter books.  Their theses are mostly about character traits ("Sally is brave because she___________and because she _________________.") Some are writing about the theme of the book or how a character changes from the beginning to the end.  Although we spent a lot of time writing persuasive and opinion essays, this sort of literary analysis is different! We are working hard!

Reading -- we are still reading on our own and in small groups, remembering to jot our ideas about the characters, the setting, or anything else we think about. These kids love to read, and I am always thrilled to see them get lost in their books.

Social Studies -- we spent some time this week learning about maps in general, and the Vermont map specifically. We have learned what states (and country) surround us, what major rivers and mountain ranges exist in Vermont, and which counties surround Chittenden County. We have looked at a lot of different kinds of map (precipitation maps, population maps, topographical maps, etc.) and we are getting really familiar with our state.

New words this week were limber, cordial and abundant. Enjoy getting those into your daily conversations!

Thanks to those of you who have signed up for conferences. I look forward to talking to you about your child! These are not mandatory conferences, so just sign up if you feel the need.  If you need help with signing up, let me know.

We will have one more busy week next week before a well-deserved vacation! In the meantime, I hope you all enjoy a lovely weekend.

 Hi Families!

Last Friday, our day ended with a power outage, so I never got the opportunity to send a blog post. I meant to do it once I got home, but of course I got distracted... Sorry!

It's been a busy week here. I am so attached to this class and feel so much pride in all of the work they've done during this difficult year. They are resilient and flexible and earnest -- and they are learning so much in spite of the challenges of masks, desks in rows, etc. What a group!

Here's what's been going on:

Math: We are finished with our fraction unit! The final assessment was today, and I was pleased with the results. Yesterday we made a list of all we have learned, and it's a long list: equivalent fractions, placing fractions on a number line, adding and subtracting fractions and mixed numbers, multiplying fractions by whole numbers, and so much more!  Wow! They should all be very proud of all they have learned.  Next week, we will begin our final multiplication and division unit, learning long division and also double digit by double digit multiplication. Stay tuned!

Reading: We finished up our social issues book clubs last week. Once again, I am impressed with how much the class learned about ways to identify the issues in books, and at their desire for justice and equity in general. They expect the world to be a good place, and I love that about them! We have talked a lot about how so many fiction books have social issues in them -- they should be able to continue this work on their own. This week, and for the next 2 weeks, we are just free reading. I am reminding them of all the strategies I have taught them so far this year, and they are choosing to read whatever books they want. While they read, I am conferring with them individually and working with some students in small groups. In preparation for report cards, I assessed each reader and I feel like they have all made so much progress in their ability to read and comprehend!

Writing: I feel like I am beating a dead horse, but we are STILL working on our essays. We finished up our opinion essays, and everyone wrote a persuasive essay in two weeks. We printed those today and shared our favorite parts. For the next 2 weeks, we will write literary essays, using some of the same strategies to write about books. They are all getting SO good at finding a thesis and at using paragraphs.

Science: We did a very quick unit about natural resources and how humans use them to make electricity. Last week, the kids all researched one renewable and one nonrenewable resource, and they compared their pros and cons. This group is all set to save the planet!

Social Studies: Today we started a new unit about Vermont's geography. We discussed a variety of landforms and what they look like. Next week we will begin looking more closely at the map of Vermont.

Here are a few more important notes:

Report cards come home on Monday. Since we were in the middle of the fraction unit when the trimester ended, the scores for that part of the math section will be only a partial score -- you will see an updated score in the final report card.

Conferences: We are holding parent conferences at the end of April. These are optional, of course. I will be sending home more information about them and  how to sign up next week.

Masks: Please remember to pack extra masks for your children. We are going through them really fast here at school, and I notice the students needing new masks after every recess and PE class. Having a few extras in their backpacks would be wonderful.

4th Grade Celebration: Thank you to all of you who have reached out to Miss Fecura about the Memory Book. I think we have plenty of parents working on that, but we will reach out again as soon as we know more about how we plan to celebrate the 4th graders at the end of the year (COVID protocols permitting!)

I think that's everything. Please, as always, be in touch if you have questions about anything. We are a team!