Division strategies

Happy Halloween!

Extra help

There will be extra help tomorrow after school for rounding from 235-315. I must know before the start of the school day if you plan on staying. Please consider coming if you are having a hard time rounding numbers to any place value!!

October!

Wow! We have been busy in Room 2! Today we were able to enjoy our "extra free minutes" of time that we earned from following directions and working hard. As a class we are earning minutes  when we get teacher compliments and work together as a class. Next week we will be celebrating Halloween with Pumpkin Math. Thank you for the ongoing pumpkin donations. I will be sending an additional email to confirm parent helpers for our day. If your child wishes to dress up, please make sure that the costume is "student friendly"! 

In Reader's Workshop, we are continuing to read  Flora and Ulysses while focusing on reading strategies of CROP- QV. Next week we will be specifically discussing point of view and elements of fiction. We were able to dig deep into several chapters with using our close reading strategies. Close reading helps us to really digest the text on a different level. 

In Writer's Workshop, we are revising our realistic fiction stories. I am so impressed with the quality of stories and the ability to add scenes into our writing. We have been working to become our characters by using dialogue and descriptive actions. Next week, we will be revising our stories by using a writer's checklist and focusing on our leads. 

This week in math it has been all about place value with numbers up to a hundred million. We have been working with both Engage NY lessons and the Sadlier text. Students must know the word form, expanded form, and standard form of a number. Using these skills has helped us begin to start rounding numbers. Another grade 4 standard that focuses on place value is that students must recognize that a digit in one place represents ten times what it represents in the place to its right. For many students this is a challenging skill. I have found LearnZillion to be a great resource if you are looking for additional tools to use with your student. 

Upcoming: 

Please make sure to sign up for a parent conference if you have not already done so. This greatly helps with planning purposes. 

Homework: 

We have discussed as a class, the importance of nightly homework and the quality of work that homework should be returned in. Most nightly assignments will receive a grade of a +, good, check, or minus. This month's book project is due on November 3rd. Feel free to email me papers ahead of time if you would like me to look at them with your child. 

Thank you for your continued support. We have been off to a great start!

Ms. DiPesa 

Rounding links

If you need practice with rounding please log in to watch this video. Remember to round to the nearest thousand for tonights homework. For example, using a vertical number line you would round 16,401 to either 16,000 or 17,000. 

Learn Zillion video

Raz kids teacher name

If prompted for the teacher username please try using ldipesa0

CONFERENCE SIGN UP

Parents- please use the sign up genius link below to pick a fall conference time! Conferences will be help on November 13th and 18th and will be 15 minutes in length.

SIGN UP GENIUS

Link for SS Test Vocabulary Practice

Remembering Routines

This week we have been working on reviewing classroom routines and expectations. Specifically we are focusing on what "give me 5" means and strategies to help us follow directions. We worked in partners to complete a following direction activity by identifying the 28 patterns that could fit the rule. It required a lot of problem solving and teamwork but most importantly you had to follow directions!

In Social Studies we have been studying the 7 continents and oceans. We have also discussed the differences between physical and political maps. A physical map shows natural landforms! In math, we are continuing to solve multiplicative comparison problems. We will be challenging ourselves by beginning to explore multi-step problems. Math homework has reinforced this concept as well. I anticipate multi-step word problems to be a very tricky topic. I appreciate your support with reviewing this concept at home. This week we have also begun our narrative writing unit. We are currently brainstorming how our life can inspire a realistic fiction story. Just ask about my 4th grade example! I look forward to seeing you on PIN night and further discussing the grade 4 curriculum. 

SS Quiz

Next Friday we will have a quiz on the 7 continents and oceans. Be able to spell and locate them correctly! Use the links below to help you practice!


Game

Practice

A timed game

Our First Full Week

We have successfully made it through the first full week of fourth grade. It has been great to catch up with our classmates and share about our summers. We have been hard at work this week beginning our first math unit, learning about maps and globes, and discussing Granny Torelli Makes Soup. Today we had a visit from a cultural storyteller. Make sure to ask about these stories! Please see below for important dates.

September 16- Picture Day
September 23-PIN night
September 25- No School

Summer

I hope everyone is enjoying their summer! I have loved receiving postcards from your  summer adventures. It looks like everyone is having a great time. Molly and Ella have shared some great stories on Kidblog too! I'm in the process of reading Granny Torelli Makes Soup now. I can't wait to start the year off talking about it. Here we are in our new classroom ready for fourth grade!!

Suzy Kline

Suzy Kline has come to visit third graders! She has inspired us to write, write, write! 

Bay Colony Educators

We had a visit from the Bay Colony Educators. Tim and Carol taught us about life in the 1700's. We learned about how school was much different than the school we are use to. It was a great presentation!

Living Wax Museum

Misplace your Living Wax Museum directions? Find them here!

 DIRECTIONS

* The Who Was series has many great ideas!

Using context clues and celebrating valentines day!

Cereal Box Reports Miss DiPesa February 2014

Sochi Olympic Schedule

You have been assigned an Olympic sport for your February project. Here is the official schedule of events so you can try and watch an event from your sport. Here you will also find the Sochi 2014 medal count. 

Schedule of events

game

Check out this perimeter and area game

Click Here

SNOW DAY!

What did you do during your day off? Let us know on Kid Blog! Class updates- we have finished our nonfiction text feature study. To end the unit we made our own books using a time for kids to fit each example. We will be beginning an ELA MCAS unit.

In science we are finishing with Newtons 3 laws. To demonstrate the third law, we made newton mobiles and needed to figure out how we could make the "motor" work. We learned that if we wanted the car to move forward we needed to twist the rubber band in the opposite direction....action=reaction. 

Great job with your cereal boxes! I have loved reading them and learning so much! We had our own cereal box museum where we went around to visit each nonfiction book report. A grading rubric will be sent home soon.