First Week of Fourth Grade!

We had a fabulous first week of fourth grade.

Reading: We practiced the components of the Reading Workshop. We practiced writing responses to our independent reading by writing about our predictions, connections, questions, and feelings about the book.

Writing: We practiced the components of the Writing Workshop. We also told stories using our Texas photos and will also be using the photos to write these stories. We learned about our writer’s notebooks and we each have an assignment which is to decorate our writer’s notebooks. The rubric is in their binders at the decorated writer’s notebook is due on Wednesday, September 1. Be sure that your child’s writer’s notebook is in school each day. We talked about living a writer’s life which means we are observant and notice things and then write about what we noticed. We did that at recess and they wrote poetic and wonderful entries!

Math: We are working with place value using our 1,000 books. We will be using them for games for practice as well as for problem solving problems. We will continue with place value next week and use lots of strategies to solve problems.

Science: We learned about some safety symbols and will be talking about the scientific process next week.

Social Studies: We practiced using symbolic representations by creating bioglyphs of ourselves then used the key to try to figure out who was who.

Back to School Night=Thursday, September 2, 2010 from 6:00-6:45pm. We will be meeting in the cafeteria and then going to our classroom for a few minutes. This night is for parents and I look forward to seeing you there.

We went to the library today and checked out some books. Our regular library day will be Mondays. However, we won’t go this Monday since we were just there and next Monday is Labor Day. We will try to go each Monday after that for check out times.

Reading Logs are due on Monday. Each student is expected to read at least 100 minutes.

Please contact me if you have any questions or concerns.

Have a wonderful weekend! I had a great time getting to know your children. It is going to be an amazing year!

Thanks,
Pam Bartholomew

Wonderful First Day of Fourth Grade!

Hello,

I had a fantastic day with our wonderful class today. The other teachers may get annoyed with me because I was bragging like crazy about our super students. We are a little chatty but everyone quieted down when asked. We all worked hard and showed creativity. We wrote stories about a time when we had "the jitters" after reading a book called, First Day Jitters. We read and recited a wonderful poem by Maya Angelou called I Love the Look of Words. We solved a fun but challenging math problem and shared some very inventive and effective strategies. We also wrote about what we know, love, and want to learn about science. We were busy and had fun.

I am looking forward to even more excited days ahead.

Students and Parents: Feel free to write a comment on our blog. Kids: be sure to only use your first name and write a blog comment with your parent's permission.

Thank you for sharing your children with me! Contact me with any questions or concerns.

School Starts Tomorrow! Yeah!!!!!

Here are some things to know for our first day of fourth grade:

*Come to our classroom (room 512) in the morning. We will line up in the hallway on the floor and read quietly until 7:30 am when we will enter our room and begin.

*Bring a healthy snack. We will be eating snack at 10:25 during our recess time. We will go outside with our snacks, eat and walk two laps around the track, then play.

*I would encourage your child to bring a water bottle to class each day. (Preferably a refillable one)Be sure that it has a lid.

*A sweatshirt or light jacket is also recommended for our classroom. Some days our room is hot and others it is pretty chilly. You can leave a jacket on your hook.

*Bring a book to read.

*Bring a photo of you somewhere in Texas.

*Return forms that were in our Beginning of the Year envelope.

*We have PE every Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. Be sure to wear tennis shoes.

*Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

*Try to get to bed early and be ready for a fabulous day!!!

Thanks and I will see you tomorrow.

Welcome to Fourth Grade!

Friday, August 20, 2010 is our Supply Drop-off/Meet the Teacher Evening! I will have our classroom ready and will be looking forward to seeing our new students. I had a wonderful summer but am very excited to begin our new school year.

Think about any questions that you may have about fourth grade. Explore our blog. Feel free to post a comment and respond to each others comments. We will be using our class blog throughout the year to share ideas and communicate with our parents and each other.

Be sure to take our poll: What is your favorite subject in school?

Don't forget to click on Bandit, our virtual bat pet. He will follow your mouse and he is very cute.

Happy Blogging and I can't wait to see all of you!

Great ideas for practicing grammar in motivating and authentic ways

I love teaching writing to my fourth graders but I don't love teaching grammar. Practicing with DOLs or correcting mistakes in sentences doesn't seem to transfer to the students' actual writing. A friend of mine (Thanks, Kari Maurer!) told me about Jeff Anderson and his book, Everyday Editing. This book discusses a better way to teach grammar by looking at what is correct in a sentence instead of fixing mistakes. He extends that idea into sentences written by the students. I am ordering his book to learn more for the fall but will be reading his website: http://www.writeguy.net/ until the book comes in the mail and using the blog: http://www.greatsentences.blogspot.com/ to find useful sentences for my class to use to practice. This blog hasn't been updated in a long time but I think that it will be a great resource for me and my team in the fall. Let me know what you think.

Math Blogs Galore!

While looking for a quality math blog, I found http://letsplaymath.net/ which led me to many, many more math blogs!

This particular blog seemed very kid/parent/teacher friendly which is awesome and linked to some great online games. I really love the free rice games-http://www.freerice.com/index.php?&t=400292116800&s=Multiplication%20Table. You practice math, grammar, geography, etc...For every correct answer, the website donates 10 grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

I also loved reading the posts from Math Mama on her blog. Let me know what you think about these math blogs and how they were useful (or could be useful) to you.

Reading Rocks!

The http://www.best-childrens-books.com/children-s-books-blog.html blog looks very useful for me to use for my children and my students, for kids to access (especially the free on-line reading link) and for parents to check out. Let me know what you think and if you found it worthwhile.