Dear Families,

Experimenting with Force

What a great week in 4W as we found ourselves beginning new units of study and welcoming multiple guests into our classroom.  For starters, we were thrilled to have Mr. Conroy, the 5^th grade field and science teacher, join us for a hands on experiment with force and gravity.  We kicked off our new unit by researching the results of force on an object and learning about potential and kinetic energy.  Students were able to further their new learning through an experiment involving ramps, balls, and measuring distance and speed.  Our students were extremely engaged and as you can see in our picture, having a blast!  Another guest we were lucky to have present in our room was author Monica Tesler.  Monica is the author of Bounders, our current read aloud, and yesterday we thoroughly enjoyed learning about her writing process! It was great for the class to see that their current narrative writing has a purpose outside of school.  She was fantastic! 

China Study Begins!

In other content areas, the 4^th grade class began their study on CHINA this week!  Students dove into their jigsaw groups to begin researching about the culture, lifestyles, history, pastimes, landforms, and other important themes of study.  Our class was fascinated about their new learning, and we look forward to continuing with this topic for the remainder of the year. In math, students are working on unit 7.  This unit heavily focuses on fractions and students are starting to become more comfortable with multiplying, adding, and converting fractions from improper to mixed numbers. We completed an open response this week that required students to reflect on fractions tools that they could utilize to create fruit-salad recipes.  This two day lesson involved working with partners and viewing student samples to revise our own work.  The class gave productive feedback to their peers and collaborated very well!

Monica Tesler Presents!

 Another new topic in 4W is our current novel study, Shiloh.  On Monday, we began reading in our novel groups and we will be reading this story until April vacation.  That means students will not have spelling or an anthology, so the homework will be supplemented! As we end the week, we began brainstorming sensory details for our Chinese poetry which correlates with china trade as well as April being poetry month.  These poems will be based around the theme of nature, and they will be published in our end of the unit China Trade Poetry book.

As a reminder, Wednesday April 5^th will be an early release and the week of April 17^th is our spring vacation.  Next month is a busy month, so be sure to mark those calendars! Thank you so much for reading, and enjoy the weekend. Below are questions for classroom conversation!

Best,

Ms. Wentworth :)

Questions for conversation:

1. What can you tell me about the food, people, and traditions in ancient China?

2. Name two different landforms found in China. (Gobi Desert and Mt. Everest)

3. Can you walk me through the steps for multiplying a whole number by a fraction?

4. What did you learn from our guests this week? Both Monica and Mr. Conroy.

5. What Genre is Shiloh? Who are your main characters?

Revising our work!

Studying about Force