Grade 4 Weekly Newsletter
March 4 - 7
Curriculum
Reading:
This week we will continue our social issues book club unit. Students will be stopping and thinking about the texts they read. They will be sharing their ideas with their book club members and building upon each other’s ideas.
The lessons for this week are:
Lesson 1: Readers not only identify issues as we read. Instead, we also want to ask ourselves, ‘What does this book teach us about this issue?’ and then to follow that up by asking, ‘Do we agree or disagree with what this book is teaching us about this issue?’
Possible Prompts:
- What does this story teach us about this social issue?
- Which issues seem important in this story?
- What are the characters’ reactions to these issues?
- How do the characters deal with these issues?
- What perspective does each character have on this issue?
- If the perspective is different, what explains the difference?
Possible Prompts:
- What’s happening?
- What’s most important in all you just told me?
- What is your idea about what’s happening?
- What else do you think is a possible social issue from the story?
Possible Prompts:
- What mistake did the character(s) make?
- Look for a place where the character feels badly about what he or she did - that might clue you into the mistake.
- Let’s think about how the character acted right after.
- Do you think the character learned?
- Try to say it like a lesson that’s not just about this book, but that’s about life in general.
- When you (or people)____, you (or they) should or shouldn’t learn _____.
- You don’t have to _____ to _____.
- It takes _____ to ______.
- Try to (or not to) _______ when you _______.
- How can I determine and reflect on the social issues in texts?
Writing:
This week students will continue 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.
Some of the books we will be reading in grade 4 during this unit are:
The lessons for this week are:
Lesson 1: When you are writing a literary essay, as when you write a personal or persuasive essay, you find your seed idea - your thesis - by first rereading all your related entries and thinking, 'What is the big idea I really want to say?' Sometimes it helps to gather a bunch of possible thesis about a text, then to choose one.
Lesson 2: When you are telling a story in the service of providing evidence for an idea, you need to angle that story to highlight the way it supports and connects to your thesis.
Lesson 3: Essayists work hard to find 'just-right' quotations to include in their essays. A passage is 'just right' for citing when it provides strong evidence for a claim, making readers say, 'I see what you mean.'
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 Mid-Module Reflection Feedback: Please send your class teacher any feedback you have on our student reflection on our mid-module assessment. Thank you!
Essential Questions:
- Why express quantities, measurements and fraction number relationships in different ways?
- How can fraction number relationships be expressed in different ways?
Lesson 1 & 2: Decompose and compose fractions greater than 1 to express them in various forms.
Lesson 3: Solve word problems with line plots.
Lesson 4: Estimate sums and differences using benchmark numbers.
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 3 Focus: The Boston Tea Party, Propaganda, Research and Glogster
Lesson 7: Focus: The Boston Tea Party
- Watch Liberty’s Kids (The Boston Tea Party)
- Write in notebook what I see, think, and wonder
- Research Facebook character using Big6
- Respond to “What is propaganda?”
- Infer bias/perspective in Glogster work
- Work on Glogster (from research notes)
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
In Guidance students are learning ways to manage peer conflicts and prevent/respond to bullying. We began with a focus on healthy versus unhealthy friendship groups and the difference between normal peer conflict and bullying. This unit is designed to prevent all forms of bullying, including physical/verbal, relational and cyber-bullying. Through the use of the Second Step curriculum, various read-aloud books, videos, discussions and role-plays, students will:
- Recognize the difference between a group of friends and exclusive cliques
- Learn and practice specific assertiveness skills to refuse the exclusion of peers
- Recognize the difference between normal peer conflict and bullying
- Learn strategies for dealing with bullying
- Understand and practice helpful bystander responses to bullying
- Recognize the similarities and differences between cyber bullying and other forms of bullying
- Demonstrate ways to prevent cyber bullying.
Shelter Drill
The drill will be held at 12:00 pm, so if you are on campus, we ask that you follow instructions when asked to go to a safe place. Everyone who is outside will be moved to the ES Hall.
Upcoming Events
- Wednesday, Mar. 7th - Early Release Day
- Thursday, Mar. 8th - CAC Holiday
- March 12th - Shelter Drill 12pm
Repeat Announcements
Core Value of the Month
During the month of March we will focus on the Core Value of Perseverance.
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