January was a pretty wacky month, so I'm excited for it to be February.
Some fun things coming up this month include:
Reading All students are well on their way to completing very professional google slides presentations, on their current events articles. (It was pretty fun to learn about animation this past week!) Some students will likely be ready to present this week, and others next week. Writing We have taken the plunge into informational writing. We are particularly examining informational writing on countries as preparation for choosing our own countries as informational writing topics. Science This week we will begin testing the stability of structures during earthquakes, with a liquefaction demo and a wall stability test.
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This is an exciting time of year for teachers and students. Everyone is familiar with the classroom, school and each other and students really get to dig in, explore their interests and grow!
A few important notes for this week:
Reading Last week in reading we focused on finding the who, what, when, where and why of news articles. We focused on making broader generalizations rather than getting caught up in all the details of the article. This can be a tough skill. Students will continue to work on their current events google slides presentations and some will likely be ready to present next week. Writing This week we will have a short personal narrative writing assignment about winter break. After this assignment we will continue with non-fiction writing. Students are particularly focusing on the different ways writers organize non-fiction texts and on cultivating curiosity through non-fiction writing. Science This week we will begin to think like civil engineers as we brainstorm ideas about how to design a structure to withstand a landslide and how to prevent landslides in general. Social Studies On Friday we will have a small introduction to our study of Oregon History, Government and Economy that will continue throughout the rest of the year. This includes Oregon Native American Tribes, Government, Oregon Trail, Oregon Industries, a play and more. It will include a few field trips in the spring as well. Hopefully the snow is passed and we are back to our regularly scheduled events. I took down all the snowflakes in the classroom and sent them home just to make sure. This past week students finished up a number of projects they had begun before the break. It was exciting to read their writing and watch their book commercials over the long weekend. They are building fantastic portfolios of work to show off for you in April. We also had a short but fascinating trip to the Wave Research Lab at OSU this past week. We learned A LOT about how civil engineers design and test ideas to improve building stability and evacuation systems in the event of a tsunami. This was a great introduction to our own civil engineering project that we will begin in a few weeks. We are also especially grateful that they made some waves just for our visit and the the parent chaperones who helped out! Read-A-Thon On Friday we had an introduction to the Read-A-Thon and students should have brought home their envelopes. From now until January 23rd students can collect pledges. I encourage everyone to participate in whatever capacity they can. STAR This week, on Tuesday, students will take their second STAR screening for Math. The screenings happen 3 times a year (Fall, Winter, Spring). Next week, students will take the reading screening. As a reminder, this a 34 question multiple choice adaptive test that we use as information to assess how students have grown and how we are doing as teachers. I will send home student results following the test. Writing I am excited to begin a new writing unit this week on non-fiction writing. Students will be doing some non-fiction writing (and reading) on countries around the world and later as we get closer to spring break they will be doing some non-fiction writing on Oregon History. Reading Students had a little bit of reading homework this past week: to either finish or revise their Inside Out Test. Unfortunately, this is some of our work that got a bit mixed up with all the snow days, so I wanted to give students extra time to finish it thoughtfully. There is a chance your student needs to still finish that up this week, and I will be reminding them in class if that is the case. In other reading new we are working on an in class current events project at the moment. Last week students selected and read articles and this week we will focus on how do we find the who, what, when, where, why and other important details from the article. I love learning about the topics students are interested in, we certainly have wide range of interests. Students will create presentations using Google Slides for this project so we are also learning about how to format and plan a polished presentation (that doesn't have too many words on the slides). Science This week we return our focus to earthquakes. Students will become familiar with the different types of faults, ways we measure earthquakes and the impacts of earthquakes on land and people. Finally, we will choose a new Read Aloud book this week. Will it be Inside Out and Back Again or Return to Sender? I hope everyone stayed warm and safe in the snow this weekend. Maybe it happened because we finished our snow globes. I hope students enjoyed sharing their craft and story with you! And thank you so much to our parent volunteer for helping out! (But hopefully we won't have any more snow days!) Field Trip to O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Lab
Our field to the wave research lab at OSU is this Thursday (the 12th) from 9:30 to 11:30. Please send your student's permission slip to school with them. They don't need any money or lunch for this field trip; we will be back in time. I still have room for chaperones if you would like to come. (The other 4th grade classes are visiting the lab on different days this week.) This field trip is a launching point for our civil engineering project about earthquake sound building, which we will be beginning in the next couple weeks. Reading It was really exciting to watch each other's book commercials this Friday. We showed a few off to our principal Mrs. Gosser and we even showed one to the district super intendent Mr. Ryan Noss. They were very impressed and so was I. Your students commercial is on their iPad and I'm sure they would be happy to show it to you at home. We will be moving on this week to a small unit focuses on current events. We will be studying the parts to a news article, so that students can more easily navigate articles to find information. We will also discuss vocabulary from the field of journalism. By the end of this week students should have selected on article for which they will make a current events presentation. All students will be using Google Slides for this presentation. Social Studies This week will conclude our study of the United States of America. Students have been in teams studying the capitals and locations of states, and in expert groups on united states maps. They pull their knowledge together on Friday in a friendly team competition. Also:
Wow, what a long break! I hope everyone is feeling very rested and ready for school! Coming break from a break can be tough, so we'll be going over our procedures and routines this week as we ease back in.
Some important things in the upcoming weeks:
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