Fourth graders were super busy in January, learning about all things Midwest, simple machines, story writing, and long division. Check it out!
The Midwest States
While learning about the Midwest, each student was assigned a state to research. Through videos, websites, and books in class, students were excited to learn many interesting facts about their state. We will continue collecting information and use it to create a large map of the United States.
To help us learn the order of the states and their names in the Midwest, we heard a short story about a man in the map named Mim.
The story is as follows: Look in the middle to find MIM, the Man in the Map. Arkansas, Mim’s pants, and Louisiana, Mim’s shoes, are in the Southeast region. Minnesota, Iowa, and Missouri make the Man in the Map. Iowa has the eye. Minnesota is his hat, and Missouri is the shirt. Mim got ill, and used Illinois for a tissue in front of his nose. Then he had to wipe his face with Wisconsin.
Other helpful ideas students have heard to help them remember the states:
- Michigan looks like a mitten (and a dog).
- Indiana goes in the mitten.
- Ohio is shaped (sort of) like an O.
- Nebraska looks like Mim’s ne-brack-pack (backpack).
- North Dakota and South Dakota are the twins of the Midwest.
- Kansas looks like a can.
Next, we will learn about the Southeast region!
Simple Machines
We have reviewed what we learned in 2nd grade in terms of the six simple machines and how they can help us do work. We are using National Geographic Explorer magazines, accessible through Google Classroom, to learn even more as we apply nonfiction reading strategies and concepts. So far, we have focused our learning on levers and ramps/inclined planes, and will soon learn more about screws, wheel and axle, pulleys, and wedges. We are looking forward to applying our learning to several STEM activities, and another end-of-trimester room transformation (stay tuned!). The blog’s page on Simple Machines: Levers has more information and illustrations for students to remember.
Long Division, Remainders, and Area & Perimeter
We have been practicing long division using the partial quotients method. This conceptual method of dividing is different from the traditional method that you and I learned, and helps students understand the concept of division, rather than having students memorize a set of steps in an algorithm. Be sure to read
more on the Pages link and watch a demonstration video. You can also ask your child to teach you this method as well! This is one of a handful of strategies to which students will be introduced before they become prepared to take on the traditional algorithm. As we strengthen our understanding of long division, we’ve been working on understanding and interpreting remainders through story problems. We have also begun working through an area and perimeter project that requires us to work with compound shapes (shapes made up of two or more basic shapes, such as rectangles or squares).
Reading and Writing
As we put the final touches on our realistic fiction story, we have had several mini-lessons that help us stay focused on various aspects of writing. Since we are writing realistic fiction stories, and we know that character dialogue is necessary to build the story, we’ve put a big focus on how to use it in our writing. Along with using and punctuating dialogue, we’ve experimented with “putting said to bed” as we use words other than “said” when characters are talking to each other. We have reviewed adverbs and talked about how we can change phrases such as “he whispered in a quiet voice” to “he whispered quietly” to enhance our writing. We are focusing on increasing our stamina while writing and using strategies that help us write for longer periods of time. A discussion of quality vs. quantity helped us understand that a great story does not have to be 20 pages long. Finally, we are concentrating on proper use of paragraphs, and when to start a new paragraph to help our readers understand when a new idea or event happens, the setting changes, a new character comes along, or the camera “moves” within our story. Students are eager to complete their narratives, share them with others, and enter them for the LAD Fair this spring!
Reading and researching about Midwest states, and building our knowledge of levers and ramps has also strengthened our nonfiction reading skills.
We use a strategy called Stop, Jot, & Think to capture important facts and ideas when we read and to build our understanding of main idea, details, reasoning, and evidence.
As fiction readers, we are working on understanding the point of view and perspective presented in the story.
This helps us become more thoughtful readers with a bigger sense of the inferential meanings in stories. Ask your child to tell you about the three perspectives from the Toy Story 3 clip and the four voices from the book, Voices in the Park.
Stay tuned for a post of student book report presentations! Presentations have been wonderful so far, and final reports will be completed next week.
