ReadingWe will return to the world of fiction! We will begin looking at Folktales. We will pay close attention to what character’s want, how character’s change and the lessons that are learned. We will continue to use what we know about story structure and characters to form our predictions. Please consider sharing some of your favorite folktales with your child! In word study we will be practicing dividing words into syllables. We will notice where to divide words with different patterns of vowels and consonants. We will also start learning about different homophones. Over the Winter Break, please work with your child to help them learn different homophones and their meanings. WritingOur writers will begin working on an exciting project in writing this week! We will be combining all of our knowledge of poetry in order to create an anthology. An anthology is a large collection of different texts that have a similar theme or trait. We will be very purposeful in our writing while remembering that poets use line breaks, imagery, figurative language, rhyming, punctuation, and many more techniques to create powerful poems! We will review types and examples of figurative language in order to make sure we can master it in our own poems. Before we publish our anthologies, we will review different strategies we can use to revise and edit our own work. We remember that poets make purposeful choices about grammar, spelling, and punctuation in order to make their writing clear and effective. We will read our work aloud to see if we can catch any mistakes, and we will make a checklist of things we need to double check for in our writing. We are so excited to begin this accumulating and engaging project!
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ReadingThis week in reading we will continue to practice making meaning out of poems and drama. We will take a close look at the mood within poems and ask ourselves why a poet would include different types of figurative language like personification, similes, metaphors, or onomatopoeias in the poem. We will also look carefully at how stage directions in drama help the reader know more about the characters and plot of the play. We have a poetry and drama test on Friday, December 6th. Please use the QR code to help your child practice the vocabulary that goes with drama. WritingWow! It is hard to believe we are already to December! Our writers have made so much progress already so far this year! In writing this week, we will be continuing to dive into our poetry unit. We will look at several craft moves that poets can use in their writing. First, we will learn to write for meaning first, and then go back to find a way to describe what matters with words that will make the reader see the world in a new way. This important revision piece helps our poetry, and all other forms of writing, be clear and strong! Next, we will turn prose into poetry by uncovering rhythm in our sentences. One way we can do this is breaking up our sentences. Lastly, we will experiment with making lines and stanzas in our poems. Challenge your young writer to write you a creative poem today using these elements of poetry! In grammar and conventions, we will be finishing up looking at the different sentence types. We will be working on applying this work into our own writing. This will really help us make sure we don’t have fragments or run-ons while editing our masterpieces!
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WritingWe will continue to dive into our poetry unit in writing this week! We will begin our week by studying mentor texts to see what good quality tips we can notice and apply in our own poems. Some mentor texts we will explore are other poems and songs! Next, we will explore different strategies for coming up with an idea to write about. Our notebooks are already full of ideas and themes we can create a poem about! Towards the end of our week, we will go on an observation walk around our school to inspire us! Students will pay attention to what they see, what they notice, and what this makes them think. It is going to be another fun week in writing!
ReadingThis Week in Reading Starting this week, we will make meaning from the poems we are reading in class. We will begin discovering how poets and authors use poetic devices like form, mood, rhythm, and wordplay to share their insights about our incredible world! Studying poetry helps our children become stronger readers. We will see that poetry is more than a set of rhyming lines. As we read poetry, we will build our analysis and interpretative reading skills. Recommended Resource for Poetry: http://childrenspoetryarchive.org/ In word study we will be exploring r-controlled syllables. WritingWe have a very exciting week in writing! We will begin exploring the world of poetry with our new unit. Poetry is extremely unique and differs from other types of writing we do in class because there are no rules! Poetry is the chance to express your thoughts and emotions however you would like. We will become poets by generating a list of ideas of things that are special to us, and then we will use that list to inspire us to write poems that are special. Additionally, we will learn some unique writing strategies that help make our poems powerful. Some examples include using line breaks and zooming in on small moments by using dialogue, internal thinking, descriptive details. We will focus on our word choice when writing poetry. Word choice is very important when writing poetry because the words we choose can make or break our poems. Our writers are in for a treat with poetry!
We have a Grammar Test on Wednesday, November 13th! Please take some time to study with your child. ReadingOur researchers will share their information this week! We have used our skills and strategies to collect information for our presentations. Our experts will teach us about different extreme weather phenomena. We will work on our speaking and listening skills! In word study we are reviewing vowel teams, VV pattern syllables, and digraphs. WritingThis week in writing, we will be finishing up our opinion unit! We will be reflecting on and celebrating how much students have grown as opinion writers. We will also remember persuasive opinion writers can help change the world in powerful ways! We will be celebrating our hard work and the journey we have taken across this complex and fun unit.
In grammar and conventions this week, we will continue to look at run-on sentences. We will be figuring out how we can fix run-ons in our own writing by creating two new sentences or adding a comma with a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS). ReadingTo study for the test, you can click on this link to take you to a Socrative review. The room number is 165991 Reading Review Answer Key
Reading nonfiction can be tricky! Nonfiction readers are aware that nonfiction authors use different structures to write information. Sometimes those authors also combine structures in a hybrid text, with a narrative part that sounds like a story and an expository part that teaches information. This week we are continuing to study how texts are put together. We will also learn how to tackle tricky vocabulary in nonfiction texts! This week we will continue to work on finding the main ideas and details of our nonfiction reading to help us write our summaries. This reading skill of summarizing is crucial to our fourth graders. Please practice this skill at home with your child as he/she reads just right books (JRBs). Thank you for your support! The children will take a reading test on Wednesday, 10/30. In word study this week, we will be learning about what happens when two vowels are next to each other and each one contributes to making a sound. We call this a VV pattern. WritingIn writing this week, we will be continuing our opinion writing unit. We will start by collecting even more evidence that relates to our topic, in order to effectively back up our opinion. We will practice by using different forms of evidence- such as observations, personal stories, and quotes! Here are some examples for how to incorporate this into our writing:
ReadingWe have been working hard on identifying text structure, learning new vocabulary, and writing summaries with our nonfiction reading. We will continue using these skills as we form research teams. Through our talk and writing in our research teams, we will demonstrate our new learning from our reading. We will practice taking notes based on text structure, vocabulary, main ideas and details. Thank you for your support and helping our students with reading at home every night! In word study we are looking at diphthongs this week! WritingIn writing this week, we will be continuing our opinion unit! We will do a self reflection to make sure our writing is easy for readers to read. We will also take some time to celebrate all of the hard work we have done and create a class anthology of our opinion pieces/reviews! Later in the week, we will learn about a new form of opinion writing- speech writing! As fourth graders with a lot of opinions, we will be looking to back up our claims with reasons and examples in our speeches.
Here are a few examples of opinion pieces:
ReadingWe are filling our lives with nonfiction! We are practicing the skills of making connections and previewing texts. This week we will examine the different structures for nonfiction. We will use the structures to help us understand our books. In word study we will be exploring how vowels work together to make vowel teams. WritingThis week in writing we will continue our opinion writing unit! We will start our week by having our own mini award ceremony! Students will have the opportunity to present awards just like on the Kids Choice Award Ceremony! By doing this, we are learning to state why a certain subject received a certain award. Finally, we will finish our week by pretending that we are review writers, and we will learn how to persuade our readers with our writing! When doing this, we have to make sure we capture our reader’s attention by hooking them with our review and then we have to persuade them to try certain things with our writing.
ReadingWe are so excited about beginning our new unit on nonfiction! During this unit, our students will bring home the books they are reading in school and continue reading them. The most important thing for now is that the children are exploring nonfiction and practicing their comprehension skills. We will start by recognizing the importance of nonfiction in our daily lives. Nonfiction texts are everywhere! This week we will also discuss the best ways to preview a nonfiction text. Please consider exploring the incredible world of nonfiction with your child! Recommended authors: Steve Jenkins, Gail Gibbons, Seymour Simon, Joy Masoff In word study this week, we will continue to review and practice making words plural! WritingThis week in writing, we are going to begin a new unit! We will be starting opinion writing- something fourth graders usually know a lot about because they have a lot of opinions about things. To help your child, brainstorm a list of opinions your child has- sports, games, foods, restaurants, etc. We will start the unit by judging our collections to find out which one is the best of all. We will then work on building reasons, evidence, and examples to support our opinions!
ReadingThis week in reading we are preparing for our upcoming reading test on Wednesday, October 2nd! We will be reviewing thinking about our characters, generating debatable ideas, gathering evidence, and putting together all that we know about realistic fiction. We will continue to work on gathering evidence and taking a position with our debatable ideas. After our test we will be participating in an Accountable Talk Circle to discuss our read aloud, Out Of My Mind. In word study, we will continue to investigate regular and irregular plural words. WritingThis week in writing we are going to wrap up our first unit! We are going to review writing engaging leads and how to show our readers information, not just tell them. Use the anchor charts below to review and practice this with your child. Also, we are also going to continue to work on our editing and revising skills in order to make our writing even better! We will look to see if we can borrow writing strategies from the authors of our independent reading books. Lastly, we will look at how to use different forms of punctuation to control how readers read and understand the stories that the writer writes
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