All hands have been on deck for reading, and great things are happening! For thirty minutes a day, four times a week, we have begun what we are currently referring to as Walk Time.

The premise is that we all have things we need to work on as readers. Some of us are working on phonics or comprehension, and others are working on fluency, vocabulary, or other reading indicators.

Our three fourth grade teachers, our principal, iCoach, and four paras are all contributing to groups working in these areas, and as a fourth grade, we are getting much better at discussing how we're learning.

I feel like I say it a lot, but our class is really working hard, we’re getting a lot done, and we’re learning so much.

In science we’ve been studying rocks and minerals. Its awesome to see that everyone in the class is really understanding the different types of rocks, the rock cycle, and how geologists identify them. This week we’ll finish up by making our own fossils. Then, on Wednesday, we’ll have our Celebration of Learning over this unit.

We’ve finished up our math unit talking about big numbers and multiplication last week. On Friday we played a review game called Runner Relay to practice the two algorithms. This week, we’ll have our unit progress check.

We’ve talked about narrative text in reading, and we even made our own cartoons on the iPads by following a story arc. This week we’ll begin discussing technical text.

I am thankful each day for a wonderful group of students who work hard. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving holiday. Now that we’re back, we’ve got a little time before we are out again for Winter Break. With that said, we’ve got a lot to cover, and we’ll be working hard over the next three weeks.

Last week during our social studies time we worked on Steps to Respect, our school’s anti-bullying program. We will finish up working on the section of “joining a group” and then continue working in our social studies unit, this week studying the climates of the United States.

In science, we have been working on the three types of rocks. This week, we will continue talking about the ways that scientists identify rocks and move into fossils.

In math, we have discussed two ways to multiply large numbers - partial products and lattice multiplication. This week we will finish up unit 5 in math, talking about powers of 10 and rounding numbers.

Wow, what a busy week it’s been! I can tell we’re working very hard, and there is a LOT of learning happening in fourth grade.

In reading, we have been working on the skill of retell. This is where paraphrase what happened in a story or passage. The retell needs to include items from the beginning, middle, and end of the story, and it must tell the events in order. We practiced this skill using different colored highlighters to find the information in the story.

In science, we have finished our unit on sound. Next, we’re going to spend some time discussing rocks and minerals. I hope this unit is as fun as sound was!

In math, we are working on our next unit of extending multiplication. This week we will be working on using the partial-products algorithm to solve problems. This may be new to parents, so be sure to consult your Family Letter on this.

We have about five weeks left of the semester, and we’re going to stay busy!

Hi my name is Kilian and I am going to be telling you about our Weekly Recap.

First I will tell you about the Homecoming parade. My school had its own float and it was angry birds. Only our school could be on the float. And I think our angry birds float was awesome! And our school even got to throw candy. it’s for practice. And you only get two minutes and then you switch. And the ones you get right you shade them in your math journal.

Now I will tell you about the Owl Site. The Owl Site is in the back of our school building. It is really over grown. So we clean it with our study buddies. We are cleaning our own spot to plant things. And we even have a compost pile. We are going to even have smelling section. That is going to have like
mint and flowers. And that is all I have to tell you about the Owl Sight.

Finally I am going to tell you about our math lesson. We are learning about multiplication.. We use fact triangles. We do them with a partner and they cover one of the numbers and we have to tell them what the number is. And if we get it right then we shade it in our math journal . And that’s all I have to tell you about Weekly Recap and now here’s Lauren with Website Updates.

And that’s all for today on Weekly Recap.