It’s been a wonderful week here in fourth grade! Reestablishing routines, setting goals, and launching into the new year!
Science
The fourth grade class is embarking on a new science unit, energy conversion! During this unit, students will explore how energy changes from one form to another, with a special focus on electrical systems. They will investigate how different parts of a system such as wires, batteries, and switches work together to make it function properly. This unit helps students make real world connections by showing how the systems we use every day, like lights and electronic devices, rely on energy conversion to work. We look forward to seeing students grow as curious scientists and creative thinkers throughout this unit!
Writing
With the New Year being in full swing, TCS is setting goals and intentions school wide. Our students are kicking off the year with an exciting and meaningful activity: “One Word”. This activity asks students to reflect on a word that resonates with them, in hopes to inspire growth, change and positive action throughout the entire year. TCS uses this practice to choose a word that helps guide our thoughts, actions, and efforts at school, home and all areas of our lives. Fourth graders brainstormed their one word, participated in class discussions reflecting upon last year, and completed writing activities envisioning what a perfect day would look like and how they can work towards having more of them, and wrote passages about why they chose that word, and how they can take small steps to reach their goals everyday!
Math
Fourth graders are launching into their next math unit, multiplicative comparison. The goal of this unit is to have students interpret, represent, and solve multiplicative comparison problems using an understanding of the relationship between multiplication and division. They use this thinking to convert units of measure within a given system from larger to smaller units. To kick the unit off, fourth graders started to analyze, describe, and represent multiplicative comparison situations, solving one and two step problems. These skills are important foundational steps to the higher level of math we are moving into.
