Right now in Journeys, we just finished reading The Life and Times of the Ant. The essential question is, "How do living things each have an important role in the world?" We learned about the world and interdependence and how ants are social insects. After we read, we did a watercolor project and used an app called Seesaw, to explain our piece. Currently, we are reading small books in Literature Circles. Then we will take a comprehension test!
We are reading Peter and the Starcatchers aloud together as a class. It is the prequel to Peter Pan. There is a series to follow, however will just have time to read the first! It is action-packed and nobody ever wants to stop, and when we do, Miss K. always stops at the best parts to leave us mystified.
Math
So in 4th grade math, we are working on fractions. We were working our way up to 1 and higher. We are working on different ways to turn mixed fractions into improper fractions, or the other way around. We also have been doing different card games to practice our multiplication facts. We have been working on math problem-solving. One strategy is to act out the parts of the problem to clearly understand it. We also used Seesaw to teach a problem of our choice to our classmates. Math is great.
PARCC
We just finished "PARCC," but sadly there were no slides or swings! We did find a lot of stress though! PARCC took a lot of perseverance. There were 7 tests split between Math and Reading. It took us almost two weeks to finish, and that didn't include retakes! For reading, we wrote responses to literature. Sometimes, we even got to watch a video! We had multiple choice questions. In Math, we had to explain our answer to different problems. We are glad to be done and can't wait for PARCC next year! :)
Writing
In workshop, we are working on publishing information texts. We were able to choose any big topic, like horses, sharks, and wars. In our story, we split it into four parts, which is the BIG Topic, Focus Topic, Big Moment, and Why this topic is important. We are using a graphic organizer and student checklist to assess our piece. When we are satisfied with our checklist, we will publish our final piece in a booklet that Miss. K. bought at Target for $3. We are getting there and hope to be "published" soon!