Grammar, Word Study and Editing

Dear Families,

I hope this post finds you well.  In school, we’ve been talking about what words every fourth grader should absolutely know how to spell right now (list of the 300 most frequently used words also available in the links section.), and about what grammatical rules every fourth grader should absolutely follow all the time.  We’ve also been working to establish editing routines.

GRAMMAR

As we begin our study of spelling and grammar, the class has agreed that all students’ writing should always have capital letters at the beginning of sentences and for proper nouns, correct punctuation at the end of sentences, and that sentences should not be missing any words or have any unintentionally repeated words.  We will not study these things in school—the expectation is that everyone should be doing them all the time starting now.  We will add things to the list as our study of grammar progresses.

Division with Remainders

Last night's math homework included division problems.  While we haven't explored division yet this year, that homework helps me get a sense of what division understanding is still hanging around from 3rd grade.  I hope no one is traumatized!

October Newsletter

Dear Families,

I hope you are all well.  School is in full swing, and it's hard to believe fall is truly upon us.  We are deep into our studies in room 315.  My purpose here is to to give you a sense of what we've been up to in math and reading.

Math

We finished a unit on multiplication a little over a week ago.  The purpose of the unit was for students to:

• build their understanding of multiplication as involving equal groups (There are six baskets of apples.  Each basket has 8 apples in it.  How many apples are there in all the baskets?).
• understand the array model of multiplication (think Small Array/Big Array), and to use it to relate their understanding about the number of groups (six baskets) and the number in each group (8 apples).
• reason about numbers and their factors.  To do this, we collected the factors of 16 and the factors of 48 and looked for patterns.  The students' observations included ideas such as:

• All the factors of 16 are factors of 48.
• The factors of 16 fit inside 48, because 48 is made up of 3 16s

•  begin gaining fluency with the multiplication combinations
  

Last week, we started a unit on data.  The purpose of this unit is for students to: