Hi!
Happy Columbus Day! I will see a bunch of you today for Parent-Teacher-Student conferences. I saw some of you last week and I'll see some more later this week. I look forward to meeting with each of you to discuss your child's progress so far and his/her goals for fourth grade. It is very exciting!
I was so proud of your children on Friday afternoon. We had our first Author's Tea of the year. Each student has gone through the writing process with one of their entries and created a wonderful person narrative. Our class will be reading buddies with Mrs. Garcia's first grade class. We invited our reading buddies to come to our classroom and listen to our stories. We chatted with our new friends then shared our writing. Then we shared some snacks. It was a huge success! We will be reading our writing to our Pen Pals when they come to our school for the next visit on October 22. Parents and families will be invited to our next Author's Tea.
On Tuesday, we will read some of our classmates stories and write down specific parts of the writing that we really liked or admired. The lists will be long. These stories contained lots of details, strong descriptions, zooming in on the most important parts, great leads and conclusions. We are working on making our stories more detailed with strong words that add to our stories, telling true and exact details about the most important parts to let the reader feel like he/she is there with the writer, as well as being sure to include exciting leads and thoughtful conclusions. We are off to a great start with our writing this year. Sharing our stories is important because it gives us a purpose for writing and an authentic audience.
Reading- In reading we have been reading traditional tales such as fables, fairy tales, folktales, myths, tall tales, and legends. We have been discussing the elements of each type of story and will be working on some projects with these books.
Writing-We will be reading some poems and publishing a personal narrative poem by Friday. It will be amazing.
Math-We are continuing to work on multiplication strategies and began doing some algebra using patterns and tables. We are using creative strategies, manipulatives, drawings, and sharing to figure out these strategies.
Science-Classifying mass is our topic. We did an exploration with magnets and objects and determined if they could be attracted through paper, plastic, and water. We also did a web quest and learned about mass, density, and inertia. We will continue with these concepts this week.
The Book Fair is beginning this week. Come and find some new titles for your child.
Picture Day is on Wednesday.
Thank you for sharing your children with me. Let me know if you have any concerns or questions.
Have a great week!
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
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