12/2-12/6

It was so great to see all these lovely, smiling faces back this week after Thanksgiving and even more special to see some familiar faces last night at Waffles with Santa!! I enjoyed getting to serve up some tasty treats and encourage you to to check it out next year if you didn’t have a chance to come this year! Here’s what we worked on this week, as well as a glance of what we’ve got next week!

We read and discussed a story called “I Live in a Refugee Camp” in our Storyworks magazine. This opened up some awesome conversation about global issues and it was really nice to get to hear different perspectives and students’ thoughts! We stuck to the facts that we knew, so students might come home with some questions or interested in doing some research! We will continue looking at this story next week while making inferences and determining the main idea.

Next week, in fourth grade we are beginning a new unit called Media Messages where we will be learning about the three different types of media and determining the purpose of each! Fifth grade will be focusing on Main Idea and supporting details of nonfiction texts!

We are wrapping up our Personal Narratives this week! Next week we will work on OPINION WRITING. I think this will be a nice change of pace and we’ve been looking at narratives for the majority of our year. Here is an outline of writing expectations for both fourth and fifth to take a peek at the things we will be working on. We will focus mainly on supporting an OPINION using facts and evidence.

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VA STUDIES: Fourth grade is working on VS4 Colonial Life! We will have a test on this information NEXT FRIDAY! Study guides should come home glued in notebooks each night next week. If you sign the study guide, students can earn bonus points for their test! 🙂 You can also visit the following websites for review: Colonial Virginia Study Guide; Colonial Va PPT; Cultural Landscapes PPT; Colonial Va matching review

SOCIAL STUDIES: We continue to work through the five themes of geography! Absolute Location (using longitude and latitude) proved to be a little trickier than they originally predicted, but I think we have finally got it! We will continue to practice with the five themes while studying the SOUTHEAST next week! Look for a states and capitals study guide and quiz date to come home before Holiday Break!