Dragon Dance

Hello Families and Happy Friday,

This morning at South, we began our day with a Buzz Assembly.  Our third grade friends did a fantastic performance and some fourth grade representatives participated in a “Dragon Dance” to celebrate the start of Chinese New year.  We also recognized students for their outstanding participation in math Olympics so far this year.  Great job Luca and David on completing all sessions.  This program is optional, and available for download on our school website.  Way to go!

In math this week, we moved on from fractions to line plots and rotations.  Students collected their own data this week to plot and analyze.  We also learned angle rotations and practiced vocabulary words such as clockwise and counterclockwise turns.  We incorporated some kinesthetic movements into these lessons by playing “Simon Says” and moving our bodies to represent angles and their rotations.  We had a mid-unit quiz to assess our understanding of adding, subtracting, organizing, and ordering fractions.  I was very impressed by how well this class did as a whole.

ELA Carousel

In ELA, students read a non-fiction narrative titled Antarctic Journal.  With this text, students learned how writing can be organized sequentially by date.  Students “tracked their thinking” with in-depth responses such as predictions, inferences, opinions, new learnings, and connections.  In addition to this narrative, we read a paired text that was strictly non-fiction and taught students more about Antarctica and the animals that are found there.  We are continuing to practice writing in a RACE form, where students restate a question from the text, and answer by citing evidence and explaining this information from the story!

Math Olympic Medalists

We are wrapping up our Social Studies brochures and next week will be studying the Southeast Region Today.  We will dive deeper into learning about the Atlantic coast states, as well as the inland and Gulf States.  In science we are learning all about sound. This unit will include a project where students design their own instruments to demonstrate what they learned at the end of their study! 

Thank you for reading about our week in 4W!  We hope you enjoyed a sneak peek into our week. Below are some questions for conversation.

Best,

Ms. Wentworth :-)

How is sound made?

What is the difference between a ¾ rotation and a half rotation?

Show me with your arms a counterclockwise quarter turn.

What was your anthology story about this week? How did it differ from the paired text?