...in our new classroom was really smooth and fun! This week we worked on all sorts of things, and went on a few trips. We had the opportunity to travel to both the Helen Day Art Center and the Barre Opera House! At the Art Center we studied and analyzed student choice based art from other schools in Vermont, and in Barre, we watched a theatrical adaptation of Laura Ingalls Wilder's life. Both of these opportunities allowed students to experience art of different forms in different venues. Our trip to Barre also opened some conversation about the difference between books and plays! All students noticed some details that were omitted from the play, and students unanimously shared that they preferred the book to the play!
We also have moved forward with our work in writing. We are working on a piece of writing to showcase all of the skills that we have acquired throughout the year. Students will be writing to inform, tell a story, and express an opinion about one topic. The topics range from Patrice Bergeron to swimming! These pieces will be published and ready to bring home during the last week of school.
As stated earlier our move to the new classroom was smooth and seamless, and while we still have a few kinks to work out, we are adjusting nicely to our new spot. Please remember, that at the end of the day, if you are picking up we are in the new section of the school...while you are here, peek into some of the new spots, the library is especially cool!
Have a restful and refreshing weekend,
Dave
Friday, May 30, 2014
Monday, May 26, 2014
The move is complete!
So, last Friday our entire classroom moved! We moved from our old spot, into the renovated wing of the building! Our current location is where Pre-K used to be, and it is fantastic. For the rest of the year, we will be using the new main entrance to the school, and if you are picking up, please make sure to meet us there in the new entrance, or let your student know where they should meet you, so they can pass that information along. As soon as you get a chance, please come check out our new room, and the renovated building, the transformation is UNBELIEVABLE!
We also have some special events this week. As many of you know there is a Talent Show taking place at the school on Tuesday evening, and there will be a student performance Tuesday afternoon. If your student is participating in the Talent Show, please remind them to bring everything they need to school on Tuesday for this school performance. Along with this showcase of talent, we also have two field trips. We are travelling to the Helen Day Art Center tomorrow, and to watch a production at the Barre Opera House on Wednesday.
We look forward to showing off our new room, and if you have any questions, please let me know. Enjoy Memorial day, and see you tomorrow!
-Dave
We also have some special events this week. As many of you know there is a Talent Show taking place at the school on Tuesday evening, and there will be a student performance Tuesday afternoon. If your student is participating in the Talent Show, please remind them to bring everything they need to school on Tuesday for this school performance. Along with this showcase of talent, we also have two field trips. We are travelling to the Helen Day Art Center tomorrow, and to watch a production at the Barre Opera House on Wednesday.
We look forward to showing off our new room, and if you have any questions, please let me know. Enjoy Memorial day, and see you tomorrow!
-Dave
Sunday, May 18, 2014
Belated update for the week of 5-12-14
I realize this is a few days late, so I apologize for that. We had a fantastic week, and are looking forward to another. This week we continued working with automaticity in math, creating pieces of persuasive writing, integrating information from books into our own lives, and so much more.
The push continues in math, we are working to get all students as automatic with as many fact families as possible! All students in our class are gaining skills, and through this work, are beginning to really understand some of the theory behind the math that we are working on. The most important theorem on our list in multiplication and division is the theory of area. That is to say that we are using an area model to understand and solve multiplication and division. What is an area model you ask? An area model is simply a closed shape whose area happens to be; the product of a multiplication expression, of the dividend of a division expression. For example: the area model used for 5 X 5 is a square with area 25, just as the are model used for 35 / 7 is a rectangle with area 35. You might be thinking, "Well that is cool Dave, but how does this model help my student answer these math questions?" Well to use these to answer math questions, you look at the dimensions of the rectangle or square. For instance, in our multiplication example above, the square would have an area of 25, a vertical dimension of 5 and a horizontal dimension of 5. In multiplication the vertical dimension is the first factor in the expression, the horizontal dimension is the second factor, and the area is the product! Division is a bit different as the dividend is represented by the area, the divisor by the vertical dimension, and the quotient by the horizontal dimension.
We have also been working on creating pieces of persuasive writing. This is one of the trickiest types of writing to learn to produce, as you must choose your language very carefully. The goal of a piece of writing is to change the opinion of your reader. Writing in this style allows the author to focus on the reader, and attempt to use the language that will most appeal to them.
We have also been working to integrate knowledge from the books we are reading into our lives. This is a powerful strategy for students to be involved in their reading. We have been using non-fiction books for this investigation, and after a few close readings of these books, students developed questions that they wanted the answers to. These questions showed the deep insight that many of them had from their books. Billy wanted to know what determined the size of a bird's egg. Mia wanted to know what the word octopus means. Tyler wanted to know how many chicken eggs could fit inside an ostrich egg. These questions are an illustration of the powerful thinking that students are doing during their reading.
Finally, we will be moving on Friday into our new classroom. This classroom is scheduled to be ready for move in by next week, and we are looking forward to checking it out. Needless to say, there is a lot to do before we get there, so this coming week will entail a bit of prep for this move. It is also important to know that our new spot will be in the new wing of the building, and should be able to be accessed through the new main entrance! This is most important to those of you who pick your students up...as you will need to come in the new main entrance, rather than the one we have been using as the two sides of the building will be independent from one another separated by the construction zone. It is also important to know that on Friday I will be at school, but the class will have a substitute teacher, as I will be facilitating the classroom move.
The push continues in math, we are working to get all students as automatic with as many fact families as possible! All students in our class are gaining skills, and through this work, are beginning to really understand some of the theory behind the math that we are working on. The most important theorem on our list in multiplication and division is the theory of area. That is to say that we are using an area model to understand and solve multiplication and division. What is an area model you ask? An area model is simply a closed shape whose area happens to be; the product of a multiplication expression, of the dividend of a division expression. For example: the area model used for 5 X 5 is a square with area 25, just as the are model used for 35 / 7 is a rectangle with area 35. You might be thinking, "Well that is cool Dave, but how does this model help my student answer these math questions?" Well to use these to answer math questions, you look at the dimensions of the rectangle or square. For instance, in our multiplication example above, the square would have an area of 25, a vertical dimension of 5 and a horizontal dimension of 5. In multiplication the vertical dimension is the first factor in the expression, the horizontal dimension is the second factor, and the area is the product! Division is a bit different as the dividend is represented by the area, the divisor by the vertical dimension, and the quotient by the horizontal dimension.
We have also been working on creating pieces of persuasive writing. This is one of the trickiest types of writing to learn to produce, as you must choose your language very carefully. The goal of a piece of writing is to change the opinion of your reader. Writing in this style allows the author to focus on the reader, and attempt to use the language that will most appeal to them.
We have also been working to integrate knowledge from the books we are reading into our lives. This is a powerful strategy for students to be involved in their reading. We have been using non-fiction books for this investigation, and after a few close readings of these books, students developed questions that they wanted the answers to. These questions showed the deep insight that many of them had from their books. Billy wanted to know what determined the size of a bird's egg. Mia wanted to know what the word octopus means. Tyler wanted to know how many chicken eggs could fit inside an ostrich egg. These questions are an illustration of the powerful thinking that students are doing during their reading.
Finally, we will be moving on Friday into our new classroom. This classroom is scheduled to be ready for move in by next week, and we are looking forward to checking it out. Needless to say, there is a lot to do before we get there, so this coming week will entail a bit of prep for this move. It is also important to know that our new spot will be in the new wing of the building, and should be able to be accessed through the new main entrance! This is most important to those of you who pick your students up...as you will need to come in the new main entrance, rather than the one we have been using as the two sides of the building will be independent from one another separated by the construction zone. It is also important to know that on Friday I will be at school, but the class will have a substitute teacher, as I will be facilitating the classroom move.
Friday, May 9, 2014
Weekly wrap-up
Another week has zoomed past. This week was filled with hard work, most of which was done on NECAP assessments. We worked on these assessments on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. Throughout my time as a teacher I have experienced the full range of effort on NECAP's, and I can confidently state that during this session, the students in this class worked as hard or harder than an I have ever witnessed. This is a tribute to the community we have in this class, as well as outside of school, and I thank all of you for your hard work making sure your student is ready for school every morning!
We also have been working on persuasive writing this week. We are learning to craft essays that will change the minds of readers! Students are writing about everything from ice cream to elephant poaching. We are also incorporating evidence into this writing that gives readers a strong response. Mia is writing about keeping our waterways clean, and has used an example of small seabirds that are ingesting bits of plastic, what a powerful choice!
We also continue to work on building with basic math facts, and thanks for all your work with this! As always if you need to contact me, please do!
Thanks again,
Dave
We also have been working on persuasive writing this week. We are learning to craft essays that will change the minds of readers! Students are writing about everything from ice cream to elephant poaching. We are also incorporating evidence into this writing that gives readers a strong response. Mia is writing about keeping our waterways clean, and has used an example of small seabirds that are ingesting bits of plastic, what a powerful choice!
We also continue to work on building with basic math facts, and thanks for all your work with this! As always if you need to contact me, please do!
Thanks again,
Dave
Saturday, May 3, 2014
First week back!
What a great week to return to school! Everyone was ready to go, students, teachers, everyone. As I saw many of you over this week, you expressed congratulations and welcome, and I would like to thank you for those sentiments. It really meant a lot that I could stay home with my family as long as I did, and the support I felt in doing so was terrific. So, thanks again! Now on with news from fourth grade.
The first week back from vacation can sometimes be tricky, but in this case it was as smooth as glass! All students were ready to go as we came back, and as I got back in the groove, so did they! Over the week we worked hard in all academic areas, and I will highlight a few of those here.
In Math we continue to work on mastering facts. In our class students are either working on mastering subtraction, or mastering multiplication. When we talk about mastering these facts we mean able to answer any fact in these families (up to 10 x10, and any 2-digit subtraction fact) in two to three seconds. We are working so students automatically recall these facts, rather than figure them out every time they are presented with them. And in this undertaking for mastery, we need your help! Every evening (or perhaps 5 out of 7) please take some time to practice some math facts with your students. This practice can be done orally, with games, or with some practice provided from me. For oral practice, just ask them some facts and give them about 3 seconds to answer, it is always a good idea to warm up the math thinking with some review...many of the students are strong with "make ten" facts and this can be a good place to warm up. A make-ten fact is anything that originates or culminates with a ten: 10-6 = 4, 7 +___ = 10, 2 + 8 = 10, these can be in any order and moving between operations, addition and subtraction, will help build mastery. Games you can play are a quick game of sums where each player flips a card, and the first to say the correct sum of the two cards wins the hand! Another game is one of make-ten, this is where one player flips one card, and the first player to say what that card need to make ten wins the hand (i.e. if a 7 is flipped, the first player to say 3 wins the hand, as 7 + 3 = 10). Fact practice is a part of homework each night, and if you would like some more formal practice for your student, let me know and I can arrange it!
We are also pressing on in other endeavors. We are working on pieces of persuasive writing, trying to ease our readers into our writing, and them slap them in the face with our opinions at the end. Students are writing about everything from the benefits of having dogs as pets, to end elephant poaching. In these pieces of writing were are backing up our arguments with evidence, and this week we practiced cutting and pasting our writing, as to rearrange our arguments to see which order was most effective! We also continue CLOSE reading, as we search for evidence and the "gist" of what is happening in our books.
I hope you all have a restful and refreshing weekend.
-Dave
The first week back from vacation can sometimes be tricky, but in this case it was as smooth as glass! All students were ready to go as we came back, and as I got back in the groove, so did they! Over the week we worked hard in all academic areas, and I will highlight a few of those here.
In Math we continue to work on mastering facts. In our class students are either working on mastering subtraction, or mastering multiplication. When we talk about mastering these facts we mean able to answer any fact in these families (up to 10 x10, and any 2-digit subtraction fact) in two to three seconds. We are working so students automatically recall these facts, rather than figure them out every time they are presented with them. And in this undertaking for mastery, we need your help! Every evening (or perhaps 5 out of 7) please take some time to practice some math facts with your students. This practice can be done orally, with games, or with some practice provided from me. For oral practice, just ask them some facts and give them about 3 seconds to answer, it is always a good idea to warm up the math thinking with some review...many of the students are strong with "make ten" facts and this can be a good place to warm up. A make-ten fact is anything that originates or culminates with a ten: 10-6 = 4, 7 +___ = 10, 2 + 8 = 10, these can be in any order and moving between operations, addition and subtraction, will help build mastery. Games you can play are a quick game of sums where each player flips a card, and the first to say the correct sum of the two cards wins the hand! Another game is one of make-ten, this is where one player flips one card, and the first player to say what that card need to make ten wins the hand (i.e. if a 7 is flipped, the first player to say 3 wins the hand, as 7 + 3 = 10). Fact practice is a part of homework each night, and if you would like some more formal practice for your student, let me know and I can arrange it!
We are also pressing on in other endeavors. We are working on pieces of persuasive writing, trying to ease our readers into our writing, and them slap them in the face with our opinions at the end. Students are writing about everything from the benefits of having dogs as pets, to end elephant poaching. In these pieces of writing were are backing up our arguments with evidence, and this week we practiced cutting and pasting our writing, as to rearrange our arguments to see which order was most effective! We also continue CLOSE reading, as we search for evidence and the "gist" of what is happening in our books.
I hope you all have a restful and refreshing weekend.
-Dave
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