Wrapping Up the Week!

How on earth is it FEBRUARY already?! With report cards in the works and conferences beginning next week I am quite surprised at the realization that we are almost two-thirds of the way through our year...yikes!!! 

First up...Picture of the Day!

This week we discussed the skill of inferring / inferencing / making inferences (however you want to say it), and how not only in books, but also in games (Brody mentioned Clue), movies, commercials, etc. we make these constantly as we consider evidence (details) we see or read combined without our schema (what we already know from past experiences) to "read between the lines." In Picture of the Day students spend time carefully observing a photograph (we used pictures to remove the barrier of reading text at all different levels), and then using those observations to make inferences. After examining all aspects of the photograph we begin discussing what we can infer is happening. Students are then asked to record their inferences with evidence used to support their thinking. This skill has a direct correlation to making inferences in our reading, as becoming good "inferrers" requires us to carefully examine not only the big events happening in our story, but also the little details, such as how a character's tone of voice tells us about their emotions. Next week students will move into completing this activity with a partner. 

This week's roots and our "concept map." Each week we have been color coding chunks in order to visualize each word in pieces that make sense for both meaning and spelling patterns. Our working vocabularies are growing by leaps and bounds! Again...someone found another word (emphasize) in their reading just today!!! 

Ok, so this isn't from our classroom...but we did have our 100th day of school this week. My munchkin dressed up for kindergarten. Apparently he walked with a limp and a wobbly hand anytime he walked around the classroom. LOL!

Our Learning Bank trip to the FM Symphony to hear Beethoven. It was fabulous!!! I was so thrilled to hear Dr. Herschberger from Concordia (who I was privileged to take lessons from) perform with the Symphony on piano, and even more thrilled that my students recognized many of the pieces he played. 

Heads in for Round Robin long division! This week I introduced long division, and we've been practicing over the past few days. Today we worked in teams to practice and coach one another through the process. Sometimes you just need another fourth grader instead of a thirty-four year old explaining the process for the thirty-fourth time. :) Each team worked independently to solve the same problem at their pod. The activity was very clearly stated to NOT be a race, rather the opportunity to work together as coaches to support one another and have the common goal of achieving the same answer as a team. To make sure we didn't race we put into place pause and resume "buttons", so that at any time a group member could "pause" their team to ask for help or double check the next step and "resume" when ready. I was SO impressed by the way everyone dove right in, tackled the work, and constantly coached one another through. They worked carefully and accurately, and everyone ended the day feeling successful and supported. Yeah!!! (Oh, and don't ask where I was standing to take this picture...)

Content updates...

Wow, have we been working like crazy, and yet it always seems that we just don't ever have enough time to get to everything that we want and need to. Can I keep all your children for an extra hour each day? Just kidding...I don't think they'd go for that...

Here's a quick summary of what we are working on / learning about:

Writing Workshop: We are mid-way through our first unit of study on writing realistic fiction. Most students are about half done with drafting their stories, and our core work each day is focusing on skills such as using the right word for said to convey tone and emotion, using the right action verb to help readers visualize movement, choosing powerful words and creative language to help our stories come to life, and how to use action, dialogue, or describe the setting to write the lead (beginning). Bailey reminded our class today about how they learned last year in third grade to be storytellers, not reporters, as they draft. Great advice!

Spelling: The students have shared that they really like using Spelling City, so we will continue with that plan for our assessing and providing options for practicing weekly words at home (don't forget that students can log in to this website at home to play games to practice weekly words!). Each week when I introduce our new list to the class, we spend time working with the root and the meanings of each word. I love how using these roots and affixes also promote such rich language and vocabulary development. May of our words this week were chosen because of our science and math units, but in our discussion we found many other applications for them...including the context of the Captain America movie. LOL! I have shared with students that this weekly list is not the only source I will base their grades on. The standards call for students to spell and understand roots and affixes, but they also call for students to spell accurately in their writing. This application will bear more weight as we begin looking at progress reports during November.

Reading: We are still working our way through Because of Winn-Dixie and hope to wrap up within the next two weeks. After completing this novel study we will begin implementing our routines for small group reading. 

Math: Our current unit is from Engage New York and has plunged us into the world of geometry and measurement as we work with lines and angles. Students have learned to identify different kinds of angles, use both full and half circle protractors to measure angles, and are currently working on figuring out the measures of unidentified angles using the measures of neighboring angles (I hope that made sense...describing in words vs. showing an example is tough!). We have even been writing equations using variables! These guys are going to be SO smart by the time we're done...I don't remember writing variables until my seventh grade pre-algebra class!!! 

Science: After two units in social studies we have switched over to our Land and Water unit in science. We will complete a variety of experiments to study how land and water affect one another. So far we have created a model of the water cycle and observed how rain affects exposed soil. Can you say washout?!

Fantasy Project: Three weeks ago I had students check out a fantasy book from the library for a book study, and at that time we determined that most of us might need a month instead of two weeks to finish reading. That month will be here next week! As I've shared with the students, we will be creating book trailers for our fantasy books using a website called Animoto. If you have experience with this site and would like to begin working at home please let me know. I will forward a few examples for you to see before you and your student begin!

Book Studies: Your student may or may not have shared that I fell out of love with the book study projects that I was creating and am in the process of developing a new plan. I will be launching a class book club call the Page Turners Club! I am still in the process of working out details, but I do know that we will have a monthly book club meeting, very likely on Fridays or before long weekends. During these meetings I will be looking for volunteers to come in to lead a discussion group and help facilitate a craft or activity. There will, of course, be treats involved. Volunteers are welcome to come for one or all meetings and can be a parent, grandparent, etc. My mom and Mrs. Syvertson have already volunteered. We are all very pumped!!!

Spelling - the Plan

Our spelling work this year will be "a little of this, and a little of that." What do I mean? Well, the district's primary resource is Sitton Spelling. I LOVE the weekly lesson materials in the program. They are engaging and effective, and I love teaching them as much as the students' love completing the activities. And even though I've sung Rebecca Sitton's praises since my stint teaching in Wisconsin (my district sent me to training WITH Rebecca Sitton), in the last few years I've come to the conclusion that the assessment portion of the program is no longer meeting the needs of our students as it focuses exclusively on high frequency words (words used most often, and these words show up multiple times on assessments), which we can still work on during Writing Workshop. So...you can continue to expect to see our weekly Take-Home Task from this program, but not the weekly Word Test (a paragraph format with missing words throughout).

So what was missing and what are you replacing it with? 
Well, what's missing is morphology and studying Greek and Latin roots. Yes, I know, you probably have no idea what that means, and you might be thinking Mrs. Clarey is starting to travel to the land of language that only teachers understand. WAIT! Let me explain. Morphographs are basically parts of words that hold meaning. Many of us might thinking of them as roots (aka: root words, base words, etc) or affixes (prefixes and suffixes).

Why is this so important?
Well, when we understand what these roots and affixes mean and how to spell them, not only do we become better spellers, but we also improve our reading fluency (we already know many chunks of more complex words and have to spend less time decoding unfamiliar words) and our reading comprehension (when we understand parts of more complex vocabulary we can more easily determine meaning...this will be CRITICAL as students progress into middle and high school). Here's an example from the first time I used morphographs with third graders: "Mrs. Clarey! I can connect -ly to three different things we are studying right now! We are learning how to spell words with -ly in spelling, we are studying adverbs which often end in -ly, and in math we are doing fractions and equalLY dividing wholes. This is so cool!" As you can see, students are able to start recognizing these roots and affixes throughout our day, and as they become more and more familiar with them can apply not only the rules for spelling but also identify and apply their meanings.

What can we expect for words, studying at home, and tests?
I will be selecting weekly lists of words based on different roots and affixes, but also taking into consideration what types of words complement what we are studying across subject areas. Last week and this week's lists both focus on -able and act.

At home, you can practice using any method that is convenient for your family. Verbally spelling (great for quick car rides between activities), writing, using Scrabble tiles, etc. I'm sure Pinterest is full of more great ideas. :) In addition, students can access our www.spellingcity.com page from home and play games or take additional practice tests. Each student's username and password is in the front cover of their planner!

Tests - currently we are taking our pretests and Friday tests on the Spelling City website. This is the first year that I've purchased a Premium Class account and had the option to test this way. I was very open with the students the first week and let them know that we will try taking our quizzes on the computer for a few weeks, then make a decision on whether or not we like this format. In fourth grade we do have direct keyboarding instruction, but we might decide we are not quite comfortable typing our words for quizzes, and that's ok! The premium account also gives us access to additional games as well as activities for vocabulary, so I think we'll find it was worth the investment.

I hope this explains "the what" and "the why" for you. Please feel free to contact me with any questions!