Math

4th grade mathematicians started their new Math unit this week over place value! Students will learn to identify place values up to one million and down to hundredths. They will learn how to separate large numbers into expanded form, taking each place value one by one. And finally, they will work with rounding to each place value. They’re not done with fractions yet though. We will see those come back around as students compare decimals to their fraction form.

Reading

Our historians have learned new strategies that will help them take notes and keep their ideas organized as they research more about the American Revolution and their chosen subtopic. They learned to create boxes and bullets for their topic and supporting facts. They discussed organizing their notes in chronological order, like a timeline. Then they looked at taking web notes, where they put their main topic in the middle and branch out different facts and subtopics like a spider web. These strategies are sure to help when they actually start writing their rough draft research essays.

Empathy

It’s important for students to understand other people’s perspectives in life, so our next SEL unit is empathy. We discussed the definition this week during the Whole School Morning Meeting. In class, 4th graders wrote their own personal story about how someone showed empathy to them or how they showed empathy to someone else. We hope these stories can inspire and motivate them to try to see things through other people’s eyes and consider how they might be feeling. 

Important Dates:

December 14 – Winter Choir Concert (1:45pm)

December 15 – 2nd, 3rd, & 4th Grade Movie Night

December 19 – Holiday Extravaganza (½ Day)

December 20-January 3 – Winter Break