Back again!

Good evening!

I've got a little more time to write tonight.

In Language Arts, we have been working on reinforcing and solidifying the concepts of selecting appropriate books and learning to "read to self". The reason why we are spending so much time ensuring that the class understands these concepts is because I will be running guided reading groups at this time and it's critical that the students are able to read independently and use their time wisely in practicing their decoding skills, reading fluency and comprehension. The books that students chose from our class library should be at their reading level - studies have shown this is the best way to improve their reading fluency. In the coming days, we will begin to work on traits of reading - looking at visualizing and lifting great "lines" from the books that we are reading. (The intention is not to deepen understanding, but to also get them to connect what great authors do to enhance their writing).

In Writing, we have started the process of using our Writer's notebooks as an outlet to our ideas and thoughts. Each morning after word sorts, students are asked to "empty your head". This means that they can write down whatever they are thinking - be it something they did last night, something exciting that is coming up, or even things that are bothering them (like the tiresome homework that they have to complete!). The purpose in providing this time is so that students will be ready to take in and write about the things that I may present in the mini-lesson that follows this time in our schedule. 

We have also begun to generate lists in our Writer's notebooks: Expert Lists, Best Lists and Worst Lists. We will spend another few days generating ideas for writing and will follow that up by activities that help to build writing fluency (again, based on reading-writing connections). 

We officially began our first round of Word sorts this week. So far, the Red and Blue groups have had their word sorts introduced to them and by the end of the week, the Green and Orange groups will also be ready to dive into the sorts that we've been "trained" for. 

Solar systems will be our first unit in Science. We will follow that very closely with a unit on Weather. A field trip is tentatively planned for the end of November/Early December to the Space Centre in Vancouver. By that time, Division 4 should be experts on the Solar System! 

Last week, we began to look at the various geographical forms last week by reading a book called "Me on the Map". We came up with a sentence to help us remember (hopefully you've seen this already -- asked the students to take it home to practice):

Super - Street 
Cats - City
Put - Province
Cup - Country
Cakes - Continent
Everywhere - Earth

We began to work on our own "Me on the Map" pieces which will hopefully be completed this week. In the coming week, we will also start to look at the significance of maps and the various components that you need in order to properly read a map. The students will be asked to draw their own maps with the grade 4's requiring greater details. The grade 4's will also soon be assigned a "mini project" which will mostly be completed in class but may require some work at home. A short oral presentation will follow the completion of this project - more information to come!

A last little note before I finish off for the night: On October 18th (Parent-teacher conference day #2), I will be attending the WE day event with PG's WE team. Since it takes place at Rogers Arena, I will most likely not get back to school until about 4-5pm (fingers crossed that traffic cooperates on that day). Since PT conferences begin at 2pm on that day, I will be needing to schedule some make up times - most likely the additional times will be (on top of Wednesday, October 17th):

Tuesday, October 9th
Monday, October 15th 
Tuesday, October 15th

Time slots are:
3:15-3:30
3:30-3:45
3:45-4:00
4:00-4:15
4:15-4:30

If you prefer any of these times, please let me know soon. 

Until next time! 

IT