Story quilts were a way that individuals told the stories of enslaved people. Story quilts also served as a means of guiding escaping slaves in their northward journeys to freedom. Students read one of the three books pictured below. The final project asked students to identify the most important events in the book and depict them as a story quilt.

Dear Parents of 4X Students October 20, 2017

This week was buddy week...

Monday, students met up with their sixth grade buddies to have lunch and complete a "getting to know you" bingo game.

Tuesday, Group A went to Whitney Center for a very successful first visit. While the students were nervous, students moved right into sharing photos and conversation with their elderly buddy. Students gave the experience a two thumbs up!

Today, students met up with their Calvin Hill four year old buddies to read to them for their first time. To prepare for this, we visited the Library on Thursday afternoon to choose 4 or 5 picture books for their reading. Before going to Calvin Hill today, students spent half an hour reading their stories and developing stronger fluency.

Many connections made this week that will last the year!

In math, we are moving through a unit on prime and composite numbers, factors, multiples, and divisibility rules. The unit will end next week.

Thank you for your assistance in getting addresses on envelopes last night. We spent a portion of today getting the three pieces that will go into that envelope into final form, ready for mailing on Monday. As a fourth grade team, we were talking about the importance of letter writing, addressing envelopes and that form of communication that is becoming more obsolete. We will be making an effort to incorporate times when students are writing letters.

Next week, we will be doing a three unit review of the vocabulary words that students have learned to date. A major focus of this will be study strategies and time management.

Enjoy the weekend - Toby

Dear Parents of 4X Students, October 13, 2017

For a short week, this has been a full one!

What a great day we had last Friday at Grandparents and Special Friends Day! Students did a great job of leading their guest through the activities of the day. This week, students wrote up the shared biography poems that was generated. Students will be sending a copy of the poem accompanied by a picture from last Friday to their guest next week.

We concluded our reading of The Iron Dragon Never Sleeps and our study of the building of the transcontinental railroad. Students came to understand the reasons and forces that would promote the idea of leaving one's home country, traveling across an ocean on a two month journey, and committing to work for a multi-year period of time. We determined that the Chinese workers migrated for a mix of reasons - by choice and by circumstance.

Through this reading and in our study, we identified several issues of inequity. The Chinese people who came to work on the building of the railroad were given the most dangerous jobs, were paid less that the white and Irish workers, and were forced to buy their own food when other groups of workers were given their food. Students were quick to identify these inequities and demonstrated a strong voice of opposition to such labor practices.

Students will be completing an assessment on this unit at the first of next week.

Next week, we begin our study of the migration of peoples out of northern Europe in the early 1900's. We will be reading the books, Bridge to America and Letters From Rifka.

In the latter part of the week, we began a short unit on factors, multiples, and prime and composite numbers. Students have become well versed on identifying the first ten prime and composite numbers.

Next week, we begin two elements of the fourth grade program - Calvin Hill buddies and Whitney Center buddies.

Next Friday, students will walk over to Calvin Hill to begin a year long buddy program with the four year old class. To prepare for this first meeting, students will go to the library and pick out three or four favorite picture books to read to their buddies. Students will also be prepared to ask a variety of questions to learn about their buddies and their interests. Students will have the same buddy or buddies for the year and will read to our buddies once every two or three weeks.

The Whitney Center intergenerational project is described below.

A good fall weekend to all - Toby

Fourth Grade Intergenerational Project with the Whitney Center

October 2017

This year, the fourth grade program will include an intergenerational partnership program. A year ago, the fourth grade students established a partnership with the Whitney Center Senior Living community. Both students and residents were very positive about their experience.

In September, the fourth grade faculty met with interested residents and the Communications Director at the Whitney Center to move into round two of this program. In working to re-introduce this program, we communicated these points to interested residents:

Who: Foote School’s enthusiastic Fourth Grade students and interested Whitney Center Residents.

What: An intergenerational program where students and residents gather on a monthly basis to work on projects and build a friendship. Students and residents will meet in the same pairings, from October through June.

Emphasis of the program:

• Establish a year long relationship with an elder in the community
• All parties benefit from building an intergenerational relationships
• To work collaboratively on projects that would be shared with the larger community - both at the Foote School and at Whitney Center

When: Students and Residents will gather together once a month, from 11:00 to 11:45.

Collaborative Projects:

• Oral histories, personal stories
• Family / cultural traditions
• Immigration stories
• United States geography - a shared road trip
• Photography and movie making
• Collaborative writing projects
• Art and craft projects

Yesterday, we introduced the program to students, reviewed the information here, and described the types of activities that partners would be involved in. Students were enthusiastic about starting the program! Listed here here are several additional points that we communicated to students in describing the program.

• Students have been divided into two groupings to accommodate the number of interested Whitney Center residents
• Groups of two or three fourth graders will meet with one resident
• Students will meet with their resident buddy eight times over the course of the year
• Buddy pairings will last for the year thereby establishing a long term buddy relationship
• Students will taking a leadership role by leading the activities with residents
• 
  

Students have been divided into two groups and are listed below along with the first meeting dates.

Groups A & B - Bring a family photo(s) to share with residents. Residents will also be bringing a family photo to the first meeting. These photographs will be used as a way to generate a conversation between students and residents about family, traditions, and activities. Students will also be leading a shared poetry writing exercise.

First mtg. Tues Oct. 17

Group A

Emilia

Ally

Ruby

Arjun

Kendall

Julian

Elle

Elethu

Maggie

Graham

Marlena

Olivia

Helaine

Hanna

Adam

Aaron B

Fionn

Eve

Wendy

Joel K

Samantha

Addie

Aaron K.

Lydia

Aiden

Lia A

Ella

First mtg. Tues Oct 24

Group B

Levi

Vivienne

Emma C

Sam R

Clara

Jason

Rania

Deyi

Dwyer

Michelle

Coyan

Molly R

Jake Fasano

Lucy

Zahabiya

Alex R

Sam M.

Yasmeena

Ada

Ramy

Veena

Charlie

Jai

Eloise

Cat

Grace

Jake F

Grandparents and Special Friends Day October 6, 2017

Dear Parents of 4X Students, Friday, Sept, 29, 2017

I am impressed with the work that students are doing with their spelling. They are following through with activities over the course of the week, resulting inn very strong test results on Friday. I am appreciative of the effort that students are putting into their work and the support that you are providing at home.

In math, we continue to work on multi-digit multiplication. The Parent News this week had a great spotlight on Heather Zetterberg's work with one of the fourth grade groups. We will conclude our work on multi-digit multiplication next week.

Our reading of The Iron Dragon Never Sleeps is punctuated by lengthy conversations about the technology of the 1860's, the reason for Chinese immigration at that time, and the various differences in cultural traditions. We will be working through the book over the course of the next two weeks.

The first writing project centers around a personal narrative describing an activity / hobby / or interest that students have. Students brought in an item that represented their activity / hobby / or interest, they drew their item from memory, and they responded to questions about their activity / hobby / or interest. We are now beginning the process of outlining a five paragraph piece. Yes, there has been some frustration around what to say, how to begin, and what information to put where. We will work on the first draft next week and then type it up as a google doc.

Next Friday is Grandparents and Special Friends Day and we will be working with students to prepare them to lead several activities with their guests.

Have a very enjoyable weekend!

Dear Parents of 4X Students, Friday, Sept. 22, 2017

This will be a short Friday Letter given that we had Parents Night last Wednesday...

One of the weekly routines that students and parents can expect is that on Fridays, students will bring home corrected work that has been accomplished. Students receive feedback on their work over the course of the week and that corrected work goes into their mailbox. On Friday, we do our weekly organization of academic and school materials and students also get the work out of their mailbox to bring home.

In Math today, Fionn was working with Heather on reviewing the steps to do multi digit multiplication and he gave this analogy: "My brain is kind of like my bike chain. When I do not ride my bike for a while, the chain gets rusty. My brain kind of works the same way." If there ever was a call to get out and go for a bike ride, this is certainly one!

On Wednesday afternoon after the students had left, I was "mopping up" from the day and getting ready for the next teaching day. As I was circling around the tables straightening things up, I came across this message on Grace's desk. I thought it worthy of sharing with you because this message of optimism is brilliant.

Below are the slides from Parents Night for your reading pleasure!

A good warm and sunny weekend to all.

Dear Parents of 4X Students, Friday, Sept. 15, 2017

A busy and productive first full week! Students have made the transition to a new side of campus, learned how to use their lockers, moved to a daily routine of homework, figured out the boundaries at recess, and buckled down to get some academic work done. We are off to a grand start!

I have very much enjoyed the Beginning of the Year conferences and learned a lot about your child. That information is very helpful to me in the work that we do in the classroom. Over the years working as a teacher and administrator, the building of strong and positive relationships is directly correlated to the success that students make. Thank you all for your efforts to support this transition!

We have focused a lot of our time on developing the routines and procedures that make the classroom run smoothly and we are well on the way to achieving that goal.

In these Friday Letters, I try to provide a re-cap of the curriculum covered and give a preview of what is to come. As always, do not hesitate to email with any insights or questions!

Touch Blue - Students have been working on their descriptions and responses to their summer reading book. These will be on display at Parents Night. Students have been asked to:

• Write a summary
• Identify the main characters and use three adjectives to describe each character’s personality
• Visualize an important scene
• Generate a new book cover
• Describe a connection they have to the story
• Generate a question that you would want to ask one of the main characters

Chromebooks - Students cracked these brand new laptops and created usernames and passwords for their log-in window. We will be doing a first writing project at the start of next week. The fourth grade team is working with the Technology Dept to determine an appropriate keyboarding program for students to use and that will be in place in early October. Learning keyboarding skills early on is critical to success this year and beyond.

Parents Night - Tuesday, September 19 @ 5:30. I am eager to share elements of the fourth grade curriculum and program with you all!

Math - We have finished up our work on rounding and place value this week. Next week we dive into multi-digit multiplication for a two week period.

These images are from a math class where students were playing a rounding strategy game. As you can see, a high engagement level!