Curriculum Update Aug. 24-Aug. 28

Reading - We continued our first unit by discussing which books are just right books to help them grow as readers (those that kids can read smoothly, with accuracy and comprehension).  Fourth graders also learned to mark their reading with codes to help them read a text closely.  Finally, we talked about how important it is to talk about what you're reading and get book ideas from others.  We have a special form to provide book recommendations to each other.

Writing - We began our first week of writing this week.  We made a list of our 13 best memories, drew a neighborhood map to help us remember stories from our life, decorated our writing notebooks with pictures of our favorite things, and compiled our writing territories.  Hopefully all this idea collecting will eventually help kids when writing their longer pieces this school year.  After kids brainstormed ideas, they chose one of their favorites and started drafting the story.

Math - This week fourth graders learned the distributive property, found patterns,  and studied the meaning of division.  Students used either a drawing or a model to help them represent a division story.  We also have shown how multiplication and division are related.  Next week, we'll wrap up our unit and take our test.

Social Studies - For our first unit we are studying Geography.  This week we discussed different types of maps along with keys/legends, how grids or latitude and longitude are used on a map, and how a map scale helps us measure distance on a map.  Next week, we'll begin to study recreation in Missouri and how rivers are used as well as what happens when rivers flood.

Science - This week we continued our study of ecosystems and animal/plant adaptations.  We are focusing on the following two reporting topics:

Reporting Topics
Ecosystems - 3.0 level:  Describe how different environments support life, explain how a specific organism may interact with other organisms or their environment, classify organisms as producers and consumers and differentiate between types of consumers, and identify examples in Missouri where human activity has had a beneficial or harmful effect on other organisms.

Adaptations - 3.0 level:  Identify specialized structures that help plants/animals survive in their environment and predict which animal/plant will be able to survive based on these structures, identify internal cues & external cues that cause organisms to behave a certain way (migration, hibernation).