Ms. Wentworth's 4th Grade Class: December 2

A student is explaining her thinking

Hello Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday! Our students came back rested, and it was great seeing everyone again. As we begin the month of December, our class has been busy wrapping up our unit three in math on fractions and decimals. This week, we began our unit on multi-digit multiplication. Students will be learning to extend facts and will be taught methods on how to multiply using place value strategies. We encourage students to spend time at home on xtra math reinforcing their basic facts which will facilitate larger problems throughout this unit. If you need a username and password, I am happy to send you one!

Working with Expository Writing

In writing, we have "published" our narratives, and we began a new piece of writing, expository. Today, students annotated an expository piece on inventions, and rebuilt this piece with a partner based on the structure of this type of writing. Students referred to the "pillar" which is our graphic organizer for Empowering Writers which helps writer's organizer their work. You will see examples of this pillar on our blog, including visuals of students collaborating to organize information in a logical fashion based on this framework! Over the next few weeks, our writing will focus on Holidays. In reading, we have taken time to focus on novels. As a result, we have changed our spelling work over the next few weeks and in its place will be a typing practice. Students do not need to come up with a story, they will be supplied a piece of writing that they will copy and type. This practice at home is meant to expose students to typing to build fluency on the computer. We are continuing to type our writing in class, however the more practice, the more confident they will feel.

In social studies, students continued to wrap up their study on the Northeast Region. We are working to complete our group posters, which will be presented to the class next week. I was very impressed by the way students shared ideas, gathered information, and worked as a team! This week in science with Ms. Natale, students were involved in a “hands on” activity to build a parallel circuit and a series circuit. Directions were not given specifically on how to build this, students worked in pairs and used their knowledge of both circuits to construct these! As you can imagine, there has been an exciting buzz over the start of the “Box City” project in class. Your child has been asked to supply a shoe box that will soon be transformed into a home. As a group, students are working together to design their homes, which will eventually be circuited with electricity! I love seeing their creativity.

Thank you as always for reading, and I wish you all a fantastic weekend. Please let me know if you have any questions about what you have read, or about homework.

Best,

Ms. Wentworth :)

Questions for Conversation

1. Describe how to multiply a number by a multiple of ten.

2. What is a "basic fact" when working with extended multiplication.

3. Name the parts of the expository pillar.

4. Who is in your group for Box City? What are your ideas?