The B Hive 12.15

Happy Friday!  I hope I am finding everyone healthy and well.  We had several students out today with colds so I hope that the weekend rest helped.  We had a shorter week than normal, but we were still pretty busy.  Check out what we've been up to:

Reading - We spend the week continuing to read Rules and learn more about the major and minor characters.  We also spent more time talking about the author's message and how we could apply that to our own life. Next week, we are going to spend the week learning about plot and how authors use plot to develop the story.

Writing - We are continuing on our personal narratives.  This week we focused on using paragraphs to organize our story,  using dialogue to tell how the characters feel, and using conventions to make our stories easy to read.  Next week we will focus on a few more things and then when we return after break, we will begin to publish one that we will share with you at our Author Celebration. 

Math - We spent the majority of the week on 2 digit times 2 digit multiplication.  Students are using three different strategies to multiply those numbers.  You can see examples of all three below:

Partitioning is the most popular method for our class.

Partial Products is the next step.  This is challenging for many of us, but students will typically leave 4th grade able to use this strategy well.  

Standard Algorithm for Multiplication

PBL - We began a super fun Energy Unit about force and collisions.  Students are asked to find a way to help Mr. Egghead travel down a ramp safely.  They had to learn about seatbelts, bumpers, and potential and kinetic energy.  This week, they will build their cars and use what they know to design a restraint system to keep him. safe.  Look for pictures on twitter!

Spirit Week Next Week!

STEAM Fun Night

The B Hive 12.8

Wow!  Expo was amazing last night.  Your kiddos did an fantastic job.  Thank you for helping get them here on time and ready to present.  We really tried to limit the amount of people in the room so that was the rationale with the presentation times.  I loved that this morning all of the students wanted more time to present.  :)

We were so busy on Expo related things this week, but we did get some other things done too! 

Reading  - We started a new read aloud called Rules.  In this story, Catherine has a brother with autism and is working to navigate what this looks like for herself and her family.  They are really liking this book and I like it for so many reasons as well.  First, because it is just a nicely written story.  But the biggest reason is because we get to see a disability from the other point of view.  When we read Joey, we saw it from his eyes.  Now we see it from the sister's.  We are using this book and our other read alouds to think about the author's message this week.  The goal is for the students to be able to think about how they know what the author's message is.  Where is the evidence?

Writing - We began working on personal narratives.  The students were expected to think about important events, people, and places in their lives and pick a small moment to tell us.  We will write three personal narratives and then invite parents to an author share where they can read their stories out loud.  We will continue this for the next few weeks.

Word Study - We took a break from Word Study this week, but students have their words in their homework folders today for next week. 

Math - We left fractions and began multiplication!  Students this week were expected to master the idea of multiplying by zeros and partitioning numbers when multiplying 1 digit by 2 digit numbers.  They did well with this and almost everyone is level 4 in this skill.  We will be moving to two digit times 2 digit and it gets a little trickier.  Students will need support with this. 

PBL - We finished up concussions with Expo and next week are heading into Energy Collisions where students will get to learn about the forms of energy and what happens when two things collide.  This is a Project Lead the Way Unit that is super fun and engaging. 

Homework  - For Reading, students have a goal of within the text, beyond the text, or about the text.  For math, students decided (with my input) whether they wanted to work on IXL, Study Links, or Front Row.  Please see the homework for  your student and ask them about their decision.