Week of 10.21.19

Highlights for the Week of 10/21/2019
in Mrs. Bell's Classroom

Spelling -  Unit 8 - Grade Appropriate & Domain-Specific Vocabulary
This week's spelling/vocabulary list will include a variety of words that are appropriate for 4th-grade students. Instead of studying a spelling rule, we will focus on the definition of these words and how they might be used in reading and writing. Part of this week's lesson will also highlight how to use reference materials such as a dictionary, thesaurus, atlas, and encyclopedia. The final TEST is scheduled for Friday, 10/25.

Reading - Unit 1 - "Courage"

Next week's task in reading will be to close read the fiction piece titled, Happy Birthday Dr. King. Students will work in small groups to answer text-dependent questions and to use context clues to find meanings of unknown words. They will also be creating a digital notebook of vocabulary words for the story.

English - Capitalization & Punctuation
Commas in a series and other uses for commas are our topics next week.

Social Studies -  The Northeast / The Narragansett
We will complete our study of the NE region with a look at the Native Americans of the area, the Narragansetts. Our focus will be on the culture and traditions of the group and how they have changed over time.

Mapmaker, mapmaker make me a map! Students have begun working on creating a map of the United States, which is a project that will last the entire year. Here are some photos of our mapmakers hard at work...

Social-Emotional Learning (SEL)
Understanding complex feelings will be our topic for the week of 10/21. The lessons will focus on how it is possible to have more than one feeling at the same time and how being able to understand that others might have complex feelings is an important part of empathy. The objectives for the week will be for students to be able to identify multiple feelings in a given scenario and to give possible reasons for multiple feelings.

Mrs. Bell's Math Class - Unit 2 - Adding & Subtracting Fractions

Problem-solving with fractions will be our focus for the rest of this week. Students will continue to work with partners to create a poster of a hiking trail that is divided into sections based on fractions that they are given. They will then use their poster to problem solve. 

On Wednesday, I will introduce the final strategy for adding and subtracting fractions with unlike denominators...the "Double Number Line". We will also look at the concept of the "better buy". Look for the next fraction CHECKPOINT to be scheduled for the week of 10/28.

Student-led learning is alive and well in our math class.  Below is a photo of Mia leading the homework discussion...

FYI...

Homeroom parents...don't forget to sign up for a conference on 10/29 or 10/30. Please click on the following link for the schedule...https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10c0f4aa4af22a5f85-october44

Happy Friday!

Mrs. Karen Bell