Two weeks away and we're back!

Hola Fourthlandian Families!

This week was a short week because of the holiday. We haven’t blogged for two weeks because school was cancelled on Friday. We’ve been busy though and here is an update.

In Writing Workshop, we have started writing our stories with action and dialogue. We’ve been working to bring our characters to life so that they seem real (and not like cardboard). We also looked at the leads from some professional writers and noticed how they hook their readers. We are trying to do the same in our stories.

In Reading, we took the first and second part of the GATES assessment. We liked the vocabulary section better because it took less time than the comprehension section. We also worked to learn twelve power verbs by reading Ron’s Big Mission and Harvesting Hope, The Story of Ceasar Chavez. Here is a picture of the twelve verbs that can help us think deeply about our reading.

In Math, we took a unit assessment on subtraction, place value, and line plots. We started a new unit on multiplication and learned about Function Machines. We learned about a new piece of homework to master our multiplication facts. We have to study them for 20 minutes a week but we got to decide how we would study. Some of us took a fact test to see if we already know our multiplication facts.

In other news, we  earned twelve minutes of extra recess today and our first afternoon recess (from earning stars). We had Town Meeting this week and we talked about how we could create Fourthlandian money and get paid for our jobs. We are excited for that. It was also Shira, Matt, and Ms. Catlin’s birthdays. To the left is a picture of our birthday peeps. Also, we finally started using our backjack chairs (with a row of us in chairs) Below is a picture of us learning in them.

Ciao!

Shira, Neah, & Ryan