Grade 4 Weekly Newsletter

April 10th - 12th

Curriculum

Reading:

We have about eight more days of our social issues book club unit. Students will continue to use nonfiction texts from our Social Issues LibGuide to help them better understand the social issues in their texts. Students will be studying the different perspectives and thinking about how that understanding can help them grow their ideas during book club meetings. Students will be encourage to take risks and disagree with different perspectives and question the text or the author to help them better understand the social issues.

Questions readers might ask to grow ideas:

• What’s really going on here? What is this really about?
• What is the message I can take from this text?
• What is the author trying to tell me? What is their big idea/opinion?
• What evidence supports their big idea/opinion?
• Do I agree or disagree with their big idea/opinion? What ideas do I have about it?

The lessons for this week are:

Lesson 1: Synthesizing
Lesson 2: Making Connections

Essential Questions

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

Writing:

This week we start bend three of our Literary Essays unit. This bend will focus on teaching students how to compare and contrast ideas to make their essays even more powerful.

The lessons for this week are:

Lesson 1: Building the Muscles to Compare and Contrast

Lesson 2: Comparing and Contrasting Familiar Texts

Lesson 3: Using Yesterday's Learning, Today and Always

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 beginning Module 6 - Decimal Fractions. 

This module gives Grade 4 students their first opportunity to work with and explore decimal numbers and their relationship to our previous module on decimal fractions. They will express a given quantity in both fraction and decimal forms. During this module students will build a solid foundation for working with decimal numbers in Grade 5.

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:

• How can place value be used to create equivalent fractions?
• How can place value be used to add fractions?
• Why do we express quantities, measurements, and number relationships in different ways?
• How can place value be used to compare and order decimals?

The lessons for this week are:

Lesson 1: Use metric measurement to model the decomposition of one whole into tenths.

Lesson 2: Use metric measurement and area models to represent tenths as fractions greater than 1 and decimal numbers.

Lesson 3: Represent mixed numbers with units of tens, ones, and tenths with number disks, on the number line, and in expanded form.

Parent Tip Sheets: Overall Module Tip Sheet, Topic A, Topic B, Topic C, Topic D.

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!

Science: The Circle of Life

In this unit we will take a look at heredity and the traits that we have inherited. We will be using scientific methods to observe, collect, record, and analyze data on hereditary human traits. We will also discuss and compare the life cycle of plants, insects, reptiles, amphibians, birds and animals - from birth to adult. Students will explain that every organism requires a set of instructions that specify their traits.

Essential Questions:

• Why do we look the way we do?
• Do all living things have the same life cycle? Why?

Week 1: Introduction to the unit. Understand the Essential Questions and focus of the unit. Look at the vocabulary words that we will be using in this unit.

Lesson 1 Focus: What are traits. Look at video on traits and discuss.

Lesson 2 Focus: Introduce inherited traits. Look at a website that describes several inherited traits. Complete a survey on our personal inherited traits.

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

Dear 4th Grade Families,

I hope you are having a wonderful spring break! On the last day of school before the break, we completed the lessons on puberty.

The students were attentive and respectful during the talks.

They asked good questions about their changing bodies and self-care. We encouraged the students to speak openly with you about further questions they may have. Please click on the link below to access the power point/videos that were used and other information on how you can continue this learning at home.

Gr. 4 - Puberty Lessons/ Parent Follow Up 

All the best,

Carey Harris 

Grades 3-5 Guidance Teacher    

charris@cacegypt.org

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



Egypt Festival is coming……….

Mark your calendar for our annual Egypt Festival on Thursday, April 19. We will celebrate our host country, Egypt through music, dancing, food and grade level activities connected to themes. To add to the spirit of the day we invite you to wear a galabeya or perhaps clothes that reflect Egypt.

Come sample a variety of Egyptian dishes. Freshly baked baladi bread (from our very own mud brick oven) will be on sale for ES students during their recess and for MS & HS. Our Egyptian Food Festival is free for all elementary students, parents, teachers, and staff. Students will have an activity related to their Egyptian Culture curriculum. Looking forward to a great cultural experience.

We need your help!

Parents are an important part of our Egypt Festival. We would love your help if you're available at either lunchtime or the bread selling booth. Please sign up to help us if you can.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16_jVvBArFxK1mnxzSOEMyk7FswaG7ly-57GqcUfU98U/edit?usp=sharing

The Arabic and Egyptian Culture Department

Talent Show Date revised to April 30

Due to a request to support our PTO gala our ES talent show date has been moved to 5:00 PM on April 30 and our rehearsal will be 3:15 -5: 15 PM. More details to come from Ms. Dolly.