Welcome to Fourth Grade in 4LG!

Hello and welcome! Fourth grade is a year full of growth and discovery. The fourth grade is also an important bridge from the primary grades to the intermediate grades. I am honored to be a daily part of your child's life and am looking forward to working with you and your child this year. I hope you will find the following information helpful.

Fourth Grade Student Expectations:

• follow classroom rules
• treat others with respect
• use appropriate language
• display good manners
• accept responsibility for self
• respect property of self and others
• maintain your best attitude
• participate
• listen to directions and follow them responsibly
• ask questions when you need clarification
• increase independence
• work alone, with partners, or in groups, as asked
• ask about work missed during an absence
• show pride and effort in all schoolwork
• complete assignments on time
• keep track of personal and assigned belongings
• keep personal spaces and items clean and orderly
• Challenge yourself!!!!!

Homework Hints:

Students should be reading 20 minutes every night.

Please view these websites for helpful hints on organization, strong work habits and how to get involved without completing your child's homework for them.

https://kidshealth.org/en/parents/homework.html

https://www2.ed.gov/parents/academic/help/homework/part4.html

Although it is tempting to just give your child the answers when they are confused with their homework, they learn more if you help them to discover the answers for themselves. Try doing this with questions such as these:

• Have you seen problems like this before. Is there an example anywhere that may help?
• What is the problem asking you to do or to find?
• What's one idea you have for finding an answer?
• Can you draw a picture of the problem? Can you use objects to show the problem?

Math: Unit 8 will focus on Understanding Fractions. Students will learn to compare and order fractions. Students will identify fractions on area models. Students will learn to locate fractions on number lines.

Reading

We will begin exploring fiction reading. This will be accomplished by reading short stories from the Storyworks Magazine. We will also be participating in interactive read aloud. This includes discussion about theme and character change. Our fiction unit continues to include building stamina for sustained reading periods, participating in rich discussion about what has been read, and creating inferential thoughts to add deeper meaning to the text.

Read to Self: The best way to become a better reader is to practice each day with books you choose, at your just right reading level. It soon becomes a habit. Students are choosing a realistic fiction novel in order to support their character development lessons.

Read to Someone: Reading to someone allows for more time to practice strategies, helping you work on fluency and expression, check for understanding, hear your own voice and share in the learning community.During read to someone we will be focusing on non-fiction reading strategies utilizing both Storyworks and National Geographic magazines.

Listen to Reading: We hear examples of good literature and fluent reading. We learn more words, thus expanding our vocabulary and becoming better readers. We will be reading Restart by, Gordon Korman

Writing

Work on Writing: Just like reading, the best way to become better is to practice writing each day. As students prepare to write, they need to think about the purpose of their writing: Are they writing to entertain? to inform? to persuade? Setting the purpose for writing is just as important as setting the purpose for reading, because purpose influences decisions students make about form. We will be exploring three genres of writing this year,narrative( personal and creative), persuasive and expository.

Work on Words: Correct spelling allows for more fluent writing, thus speeding up the ability to write and get thinking down on paper. Students will work on utilizing context clues in order to define new words.

Spelling:

• Spelling in fourth grade is embedded throughout our reading and writing instruction and mini-lesson work. We do not formally pre and post test a list each week, but instead work with individual students, small groups, and the class as a whole to teach spelling patterns, exceptions, homophones, as well as common greek/latin roots. This is done in a variety of ways, as our goal is to call attention to, and encourage correct spelling as a natural part of every reading and writing task, not just a list of words that is memorized and tested once a week.

Math

• Topic 6: focus is on division strategies for large numbers. We will apply strategies learned in our place value unit to make estimates, and then solve to see if our answer is reasonable. We will also practice checking work with the opposite operation.