This week in grammar, the students focused on identifying nouns and adjectives. They cut, pasted, and sorted words in their interactive notebooks. They also wrote about a great day away from school, and then trade with a partner. They had to circle and underline the nouns and adjectives in their friend’s book. On Thursday, they moved around the room completing task cards about the parts of speech, and today they took an assessment.
In our morphology lessons, we eased in by reviewing some morphemes they had learned last year. We reviewed -s/-es, -able/-ible, and -y. They enjoy finding words that contain the morphemes in a story on the board.
One of the highlights of the week was starting our first class novel, Charlotte’s Web. The classes were stunned to find out that the book is 74 years old! We talked about why it is a classic book that has stood the test of time and how we will read it differently now than they did when they might have heard it at 5 or 6.
Throughout the week, we read the first four chapters. I read aloud the narration, and kids take on the parts of the characters and read the dialogue. We have answered some multiple-choice questions about each chapter, and today we tried our first short answer questions. We are beginning with sentence stems and will work our way up to writing our own full answers.
We also introduced the Reader’s Notebook, and the kids are excited to begin recording their 90 minutes of reading. Most of them have already begun devouring books from our classroom or the ‘big’ library.
In social studies this week, the students added the five oceans (and another catchy song) to their repertoire and their maps. We also learned about the cardinal and intermediate directions. 4th graders also began learning to navigate around maps using the directions and will continue that next week.
This morning, we gathered for an assembly to listen to the 8th graders who were nominated to be Black and Orange Captains. Nine nominees gave speeches about what would make them a great captain, and afterwards, we returned to our classrooms to vote. Congratulations to Harrison Frist and Harper Hand for the Blacks and Henry Saltzman and Crislyn Hope for the Oranges!
In Morning Meeting this week, the 4Ms enjoyed games of Two Arms, One Arms, No Arms, Agreeable Corners, and more. Both groups love playing Stop the bus! – which is similar to Scattergories. They shared about favorite foods, pets, and more. We also greeted one another with a ball toss and in Chinese!
In addition, 4E wrote down their goals for the year on Monday. The goals ranged from making new friends and learning more about each other to memorizing math facts and reading longer books. On Tuesday, we discussed what kind of classroom we need to create so that everyone can achieve their goals. They came up with a great set of expectations and then everyone signed their name.
For those of you who made it to Parent Night on Tuesday, you saw our students’ wonderful “I am From” poems. The final drafts are a colorful and meaningful addition to our hallway.
In honor of Dolly Parton’s passing, we had a class discussion about her many accomplishments. I read aloud Coat of Many Colors, and we listened to the song.
Recess is always a highlight of our day, and even indoor recess can be fun!
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