March Update

Reading 

Throughout the beginning of March, students will continue to apply their nonfiction and fiction reading strategies to short texts. After reading, they will respond to the text by generating written responses. These written responses will not only help to solidify their understanding of important ideas, but will also allow them to justify their thoughts by using evidence directly from the text. 

As an example, your child might read a short fiction text entitled, “Champion of Quiet” and will generate a written response answering the question: “What was the theme of the text? How do you know?” Writing about reading makes comprehension visible; it also helps readers frame and focus their understanding.

 

As we move into the end of March, 4th graders will begin diving into historical fiction book clubs. When reading historical fiction, kiddos will notice that the novels themselves are inherently complex. After all, the characters in each student’s book will be living in places where students have not lived and will be living during time periods students may not have a lot of background knowledge on (example: Flint, Michigan in 1936). Therefore, our 4th grade readers must figure out the nature of the setting, the ways people lived in that particular time period, and the relationships the characters have to historical tension. So, at this point of our school year together, the reading work will be appropriately intense. The kids will be reading an assigned text in their book club with a focus on either the American Revolution, The Great Depression, Pioneer Life, or Segregation and Civil Rights. These books all contain a very powerful message and will teach kids about incredibly significant times in our country's history.

The overarching goals of our historical fiction unit are to build strong reading skills in areas such as character analysis, determining theme(s), inferring within a text, comparing and contrasting texts, synthesizing across texts, and talking and writing about our reading. These are skills that our 4th grade readers can apply across any fiction text that they pick up and read regardless of whether or not it is historical!

By the end of the unit, students will be able to accomplish various goals such as inferring about characters by: inferring about their motivations and desires, inferring about a character’s unique perspective, and inferring about character feelings based upon the historical experiences or roles each character has.   

Historical fiction moves swiftly and has multiple layers. This being said, I will model the learning we do in this unit. I will be modeling each learning target using Lois Lowry’s powerful historical fiction novel entitled Number the Stars. I will facilitate as the kiddos engage in book talks and share their thinking with each other in their book clubs.

Writing 

4thgraders reviewed, revised, and finalized their persuasive essay towards the end of February. I was blown away by their choices as writers to publish in such convincing pieces full of clear reasons and meaningful examples. 

As we begin a new month, we will also begin a new unit in writing. This unit will focus on literary essays. (There is a strong link between this unit and our reading unit because we are writing about our reading) We will be reading a variety of short texts and devising theories about the characters in the text. The kids will learn how to fine-tune and revise their theories, identity evidence from the text to support their theories, evaluate the validity and strength of the evidence, and synthesize their thinking as they craft a literary essay.

Math 

March will signal lots of exciting new learning in math. We will begin in Topic 7: Factors and Multiples. In this unit, students will build an understanding that factors are numbers multiplied together to determine a product. Given a number up to 100, students will use their number sense, visual relationships such as arrays and grids, and divisibility rules to identify: factors/multiples.

Next, we will dive into Topic 8: Extending Understandings of Fraction Equivalence and Ordering. Students will use area models, number lines, and other reasonable strategies in order to complete rigorous work with fractions. For instance, we will recognize and generate equivalent fractions and compare fractions. 

Then, Topic 9: Understanding Addition and Subtraction of Fractions will deepen our fraction understanding further. We will learn how to do mathematical operations (addition and subtraction) by using fractions strips and number lines. 

Finally, Topic 12: Understanding and Comparing Decimals will launch us into how we can relate fractions to decimals.

 

Social Studies

During the month of March, we will continue to broaden our understanding of the major groups who impacted and shaped historic and modern-day Colorado. As a reminder, these groups are the Gold Rushers, Explorers, Fur Traders/Mountain Men, Early Settlers, and Historic Indians. As we mine through these stories from the past, our main learning focus will be on lasting impacts (both positive and negative). In other words, how did certain groups impact others? In addition, how did each group influence our current culture.   

Important Upcoming Dates

March 4thand March 12th: Parent Teacher Conferences

March 9th– March 13th: GRE Book Fair

March 16th– March 20th: NO School (Spring Break) 

March CMAS Testing: See 4thgrade schedule below