Grade 4 Newsletter March 18th - 22nd

Grade 4 Weekly Newsletter

March 18th - 22nd

Curriculum

Reading:

This week we will continue our social issues book club unit. Students will be using nonfiction texts to help them better understand the social issues in their texts. They will be encouraged to read the books and articles Mrs. Fitzgerald has collected for them on the Library Lib Page. Readers will make self connections and develop perspectives about their text. They will question who has upper hand or power in their books and challenge the text. Readers will ask themselves if they are ok with how certain groups are represented in their books and if this is the same way they see the world. If it isn’t what would they like to do about it?

The lessons for this week are:

Lesson 1: Digging Deeper into Social Issues by Reading Nonfiction

Lesson 2: Putting It All Into Perspective

Lesson 3: Who Has The Power In This Social Issue

Lesson 4: Questioning the Text and Social Issues

Essential Questions

• How can I determine and reflect on the social issues in texts?

Writing:

We have two more weeks for our Literary Essay unit. This unit aims to make reading a more intense, analytical experience for our grade 4 students. It builds upon our students prior work with writing personal and persuasive essays. Students will address the theme of a story or stories and interpret and analyze the ways words, phrases, and ideas are used in a text. Students will be encouraged to use quotes, micro stories, and lists as evidence to support their theories. This week students will be working on adding complexity to their ideas to help them develop their thesis statements. Later on this week, writers will be revising their leads and endings before exploring how authors deliberately use craft to highlight deeper meaning in a text.

Some of the books we will be reading in grade 4 during this unit are:

The lessons for this week are:

Lesson 1: Adding Complexity to Our Ideas

Lesson 2: Flash-Drafting Literary Essays

Lesson 3: Beginnings and Endings

Lesson 4: Using Descriptions of an Author's Craft as Evidence

Essential Questions

• How do writers select a claim to write a literary essay?
• How can I show evidence that supports the idea or claim I am making about a text?
• How do writers analyze text for reasoning?

Mathematics: 

This week we will be continuing Module 5 - Fraction Equivalence, Ordering, and Operations.

This module builds on students’ grade 3 work with unit fractions as they explore fraction equivalence and extend this understanding to mixed numbers. This leads to comparison of fractions and mixed numbers and the representation of both in a variety of models. Benchmark fractions (ie. ½) play an important role when students reason about fraction and mixed number sizes. Students have the opportunity to apply what they know to be true to new situations and problems.

Math End-Module - We will complete our Module 5 with our assessment next week, before Spring Break.

Trial Assessment Reflection Feedback: Please give your student’s teacher any feedback you have on the “I can” Student Reflection students will bring home to help them reflect on their end-module assessment. Do you feel it helps your child identify strengths and areas of growth? How could we improve it?

Essential Questions:

• Why express quantities, measurements and fraction number relationships in different ways?
• How can fraction number relationships be expressed in different ways?

The lessons for this week are:

Lesson 1: Represent the multiplication of fractions using the associative property and visual models.

Lesson 2: Find the product of a whole number and a mixed number using the distributive property.

Lesson 3: Solve multiplicative comparison word problems involving fractions.

Lesson 4: Solve word problems involving the multiplication of a whole number and a fraction including those involving line plots.

Parent Tip Sheets: Topic A, Topic B, Topic C, Topic D, Topic E, Topic F, Topic G, Topic H.

Here is the LINK to the Growth Mindset video (Jo Boaler). We suggest you watch it with your child and discuss what might create a positive math classroom at school. How can you build a positive math relationship with your child? What type of dialogue will you use? You might like the following sentence starters to help you!

Social Studies: The Road to Independence

In this unit we will be looking at the causes of the American Revolution and discussing the issues of the day from multiple perspectives. In the culminating project the students will be selecting a famous person from the time (American or British) and created a ‘Facebook’ page for them on Glogster. This poster will include famous quotes, pictures, and some oral recordings that the students make as they attempt to become their character.

Essential Questions:

• How do people, government and key events connect to build a nation?

Week 5 Focus: Students will argue who is right in the Boston Tea Party, giving reasons to support their argument. The rest of the week, the students will be working to prepare their Glogster/Facebook page.

Lesson 12 Focus: Mini-Lesson: Argument Talk Rules Time for presentation preparation (GLOGSTER and speech)

Lesson 13 Focus: Time for presentation preparation (GLOGSTER and speech)

Lesson 14 Focus: Time for presentation preparation (GLOGSTER and speech)

Grade 4 Homework:

Daily homework tasks will be written into student planners each day. Tasks may include reading for 20-30 minutes per night, writing for 10 minutes per night along with additional mathematics work. Homework may differ according to teachers and students. Any mathematics homework that students find challenging please advise their homeroom teacher so they can progress accordingly. Homework is not meant to be impossible, challenging for students to grow their brains, but not impossible!

Grade 4 Guidance Update 

Guidance Update – Upcoming Puberty Talks

Dear Grade 4 Families,

As part of the health and social education your child receives, we will be providing puberty classes for all 4th and 5th grade students this month. This program revolves around the belief that if children are better informed they will be more comfortable with the changes they are going through and more willing to seek support from their parents and other trusted adults.

The dates for the Grade 4 puberty lessons are Thursday, March 22nd and Thursday, March 29th.

Please click on this Puberty - Letter for Parents link for important information regarding the topics that will be addressed and the video that will be showed.

All the best,

Carey Harris

charris@g-cacegypt.org

Guidance Update Gr. 4– Responding to Cyber Bullying

There are many ways to socialize with friends, such as talking to them in person or using technology to send emails or texts. Using technology to communicate can be really fun and useful, but technology can also be used to hurt or cyber bully other people. Cyber bullying is using electronic technology to purposefully hurt someone else. It is immediate, long lasting and can spread further and faster than people are usually aware. Students will learn that everything they say or do online can be tracked, nothing electronic is private and there is a lasting digital footprint.

Students will:

Discuss the importance of keeping their personal information (Y.A.P.P.Y your name, address, phone number, passwords or your plans) safe.

Review the 3 steps for handling hurtful messages:

1. Do not respond

2. Save it

3. Tell an Adult;

· Demonstrate ways to support and/or stand up for someone being hurt online (such as reporting to an adult or leaving a chat group).

From the Library…

Mark your calendars! The annual ES Book Parade Assembly is on April 10, the day we get back from the April break. This year, the ES Library Council has declared the theme to be GRAPHIC NOVELS! Stay tuned for more details.

Typing Program

Our grades 3, 4, and 5 students learn touch typing in their classes to prepare for the work they do on computers in upper elementary and in middle school. The program we use is called ‘Typing Club’ and is an online program from Google. Link here. Students can access the program from home.

Upcoming Events

• Tuesday March 20th Founders Day, 72 years @ 2:30pm on the ES Lawn.

Core Value of the Month

During the month of March we will focus on the Core Value of Perseverance.