December Writing Workshop

Theme Essay Unit

The fourth grade students have been learning a lot about various big life topics and experiences that people will encounter throughout their lives. Some Big Life Topics that we are noticing pop up in our independent reading books and our read aloud books are:

Friendship

Fitting In

Families

Accepting Others

Accepting Yourself

Death

Loss

Siblings

Peer Pressure

In this writing unit, the students are working on noticing themes and or messages that can be interpreted about the Big Life Topics stated above. The theme essay will then convey the various themes they learned from the books that they read. In the essay, students will have to state the theme and use three pieces of text evidence to support their theme. 

December Events

December is an exciting month filled with lots of holiday joy! Please check out the special events our fourth grade is participating in this month.

December 16th @ 12:45PM- Nutrition and Movement Dress Rehearsal

December 17th @ 10AM- Nutrition and Movement Performance.  The entire Fourth Grade will be doing a performance about healthy eating and the importance of exercise.  Come join us and celebrate what we have learned!

**All students performing must wear all black, black pants (leggings, sweatpants, no jeans) and a black t-shirt for BOTH the dress rehearsal and performance.**

December 18th @ 8:40AM- Parents as Reading Partners- Come to school and read with your family.

December 23rd- Silly Day- Students are encouraged to wear pajamas with your favorite bedtime book!

December 24rd- Winter Recess Begins

November / December Reading

November/December Reading Unit:

Identifying Themes

The goal of this unit is to help the students understand that comprehending books is not just about understanding the plot of the story, instead, comprehending books means thinking about the ideas within books.  We want to help kids become more thoughtful as they read, understanding tha books are about ideas.  We want readers to develop the habit of asking themselves:

• What is this story really about?
• What themes or messages are buried in the text?
• What evidence to I have to support my thinking?
• What lesson can I learn about life after reading this story?

To help the students throughout this process, they will be introduced to Big Life Topics.  BLTs are the general topics that show up in books.  Once we have identified the BLTs, we then begin the work of narrowing down themes.

Below you will see examples of the Big Life Topics we will be covering in class, and some of the possible themes that can be developed from these BLTs.

In order to develop our skills in developing themes, we will be reading a number of short stories together and having conversations geared towards identifying BLTs as well as the themes that show up across multiple texts.  Some of the texts we will be reading throughout this unit are:

November Math

November Math

This month, we will begin our unit of study in multiplication and division.  Students will build upon their knowledge of place value that they learned throughout the first unit, as well as use visual representations to solve multiplication and division problems with multi-digit numbers.  As a key area of focus for fourth grade, this module works to develop students ability to reason about the methods and models chosen to solve problems with multi-digit factors and dividends.  

Students will begin by investigating formulas for area and perimeter.  They will then move on to using number discs and the place value chart to multiply single digit numbers by multiples of 10, 100 and 1,000.  Later, they will be able to multiply two digit multiples of ten by each other.  The students will be exposed to further practice with place value charts and area models.  See below for an example of each:

Solving a multiplication problem using a place value chart:

Solving a multiplication problem using area model:

New or Recently Introduced Vocabulary for this unit:

• Associative property 
• Composite Number
• Distributive property
• Divisor
• Partial Product
• Prime Number
• Remainder

Familiar terms:

• Area
• Bundling
• Compare
• Factors
• Multiple
• Perimeter
• Product
• Quotient 

November/December Social Studies

In November, we will begin a mini-unit focused on The Age of Exploration and European Explorers. During this unit, students will learn about various different European Explorers. Students will research different explorers by reading non-fiction texts. The goal of this unit is for students to understand why people in Europe began to explore territories across the globe and for students to recognize that the beginnings of our country are founded on the Age of Exploration. The purpose of this unit is to prepare students for the following unit, Colonial Life in North America. 

Starting at the end of November, we will begin our Colonial unit. During this time, students will learn about why people settled in the American colonies and how they survived in a new land. Using both primary and secondary resources, students will develop an understanding for what life was like for people living in the American Colonies. As the unit continues, we will begin to focus on Colonial life in New York State and how this would eventually lead to the development of New York today. 
The unit will last approximately one month and will end with a culminating research project. Working in the classroom, students will choose topic to research and will learn how to use non-fiction texts and Internet resources to carry out their research. Using the information they gather, students will develop a generalization, or big idea, about what life was like during Colonial times (Ex: During Colonial times, children had more responsibilities than they do today). Students will then use their research findings to develop three reasons that support their generalization. Students will also be required to prove that their reasons are true by using facts taken from the non-fiction resources they used during their research. Students will present their projects in the form of three short paragraphs and sketches that depict their research findings. 

Students may also continue their research at home by using our class website: http://www.portaportal.com/ Students may scroll down to the Social Studies section of the website in order to help with their research. See login information below:

Username: 4302
Password: ps172

Character Essay Writing

Throughout this writing unit, students will think deeply about the types of people the characters they are reading about are. They will take notice what characters say, do and or think to come up with a thesis, an idea, about their character. They will identify a trait word that best fits their character and place post-its across a book to be sure that they can prove their idea with at least three pieces of text evidence. 

It is important that during this writing unit, students keep in mind that in order to say a character is a certain way, they must look at the character as a whole and form the strongest idea they can about them. Characters can sometimes be complex, act more than one way, under different circumstances or towards different people. Therefore, students have to choose a strong trait that can be proven across a book. 

Additionally, this unit requires students to include voice throughout their essay. Specifically, during this unit, voice is seen as reaction sentences. Reaction sentences are what a reader felt when he or she came across the action a character portrayed. As a writer, being able to express the feelings you had when your character said, did or thought something pulls your reader in and makes them more interested in your ideas and or feelings. 

November Read Aloud

November & December Read Aloud

What’s New in Read Aloud?

This month we will be continuing our work with the text, There’s a Boy in the Girls’ Bathroom. This will take us through much of November. At the close of the month we will begin a new novel which will take us through to December.

During Read Aloud we will be reading a novel, The Sign of the Beaver written by Elizabeth George Speare. This novel is a historical fiction text. This means that although the characters and events are fictional, the setting takes place during a particular period of history. While reading historical fiction it is important to keep in mind that the problems that the character is dealing with are specific to the time period addressed in the text. Basically, the problem that the main character is facing could not be a problem that a person would be faced with in present time.

During this unit students will be responsible for:

1) Completing assigned extended response questions in the given response packet.

These responses will be collected periodically and graded. The grading criteria for these responses is as follows:

0- point response includes:

·                    Does not answer the prompt/question

·                     No answer

·                    Hand-writing is so messy that the answer is too difficult to read

·                     Includes many grammar mistakes making the answer too difficult to read

           

1- point response includes:

·                  A literal explanation or retell of the prompt/question

·                  Little details or information from the text to support the explanation

·                   Incomplete sentences

2-point response includes:

·                A correct inference (idea) from the text that answers the question/prompt

·               An explanation of your inference (idea) in your own words

·               Specific details from the text that proves your inference, such as a quote

·               Complete sentences and correct punctuation

It is very important for students to adhere to the criteria and aim to receive a ‘2’ for their responses. This practice will get them into the habit of accurately answering an extended response question and supporting it with evidence. This skill is necessary in order to be successful on the ELA exam.

2) Completing assigned vocabulary work. Students received a vocabulary packet, containing a graphic organizer to help them apply this word in various ways. They are required to use the word in a sentence, write the definition, draw a picture of and write an example of the vocabulary word.

3)  Vocabulary Quiz- Knowledge of the vocabulary words will be assessed every week. Students should be prepared, every Friday, for a vocabulary quiz.

The Sign of the Beaver Vocabulary Words

·      Survivalist

·      Prejudice

·      Naïve

·      Clever

·      Stubborn

·      Arrogant

·      Wise

·      Skeptical

·      Competitive

·      Bitter

In addition, due to the fact that this genre isn’t what students are used to reading, this text is full of ‘tricky parts’. Throughout the lesson we will identify these parts and apply strategies to work through them in order to ensure comprehension. Students will be encouraged to apply these strategies when reading independently.

Writing Workshop

Character Traits 

Paragraph Writing

Beginning of Unit Goal: Students Will Discuss Character Ideas, Character Traits, and Write Character Idea Paragraphs with Angled Support From a Text.

We will discuss character trait words or ideas about characters that fit characters from read alouds, both short texts and novels.  As we discuss the character trait words, we will develop a list of behaviors for the specific character trait words that were identified.  Additionally, we will help students label characters from read alouds with the appropriate character trait word and guide students in noticing how characters change over time, the positive / negative change of the trait word. Explain that a character trait is a word we use to describe a pattern in a character's personality (the type of person someone is).  For example, a person is not a generous person just because they give you a pencil one time.  To label someone a generous person, they need to show they are generous repeatedly (across the text).  Remind kids that we figure out what type of person someone is by paying attention to what they say, do, and think.

As kids practice writing angled character paragraphs to prove their character idea, we will remind them that writers…

• Choose a spot that pays off to prove their character idea. 
• Every detail included needs to connect back to the character idea.
• When writing, pick spots that really prove your character idea.  Always question: If someone who never read the book before was reading this, would they understand how the part you are retelling connects to your character idea?