April 2008

Dear Families,

Fourth grade students are busy with activities designed to give them the opportunity to make connections between the curriculum and the world around them, while at the same time preparing them for the transition to fifth grade.  As part of this experience, children in fourth grade have begun to study the life in colonial times as they explore the rich heritage of our country.  This spring we will use art and drama to role-play and learn colonial crafts.  As part of this experience students will have the opportunity to try different arts and crafts during a colonial day rotation between all six grade four teachers.  In addition students will spend a day in Mystic Seaport (on May 2nd) where they will experience another way of life firsthand. 

Also this spring the fourth grade will take part in Colonial Day.  On Colonial Day students and teachers will dress in colonial fashion as if they were in the colonial times.  We will use role-playing to act out what a typical day for a colonial school student would be like.  We will have a colonial picnic and finally in the afternoon students will perform colonial songs and dances for you to enjoy.

On a different day, students will remain in their own classrooms for a final craft activity.  Students will sit as many colonial children did to have their silhouette “cut”.  During the 16th and 17th centuries silhouette artists traveled from town to town offering to cut the children’s silhouettes for very little money.  Because there were no cameras and oil portraits were so costly, parents rushed at the opportunity to have these likenesses of their children.  Silhouettes will proudly be hung on each bulletin board, if you are in school be sure to check them out and see if you can tell which silhouette is your child.

In writing we have begun expository writing, writing to inform using the five paragraph essay format.  Before students can begin writing well organized, fully elaborated expository pieces they need experience in reading and analyzing many examples of this kind of writing, which is just what we have been working on in class!  They are beginning to see and understand how the author organizes and illustrates a variety of facts so that the reader can readily access the information provided.  During our study of organization and analysis of expository writing we will diagram and understand the expository framework, identify and eliminate extraneous details, add relevant details and finally compare and critique expository pieces.

In reading we are currently reading Spider Boy by Ralph Fletcher.  In this story a student is faced with transitioning to a new school, making new friends, and learning how to cope with a school bully.  Students are truly enjoying Fletcher’s book and we have been learning a lot of new vocabulary, using the dictionary, working on reading fluency, studying the author’s purpose, and answering various types of comprehension questions using support from the text to back up their answer.

In math we are wrapping up our unit on linking multiplication and division and it has become quite evident that the class has to spend more time practicing their multiplication facts each night. It is imperative that they enter fifth grade with a solid foundation of knowing basic multiplication and division facts so they are able to complete more complex multi-step math problems.  We will be moving onto investigating numbers to one million, manipulating money, and much more.  But, we will continue to work on double digit multiplication and long division for the remainder of the year. 

Fourth grade has been such an exciting year and we still have so much more to learn!

Sincerely,
Mrs. Cinquino