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Curriculum
Academics
READING WORKSHOP
For students to become more proficient readers, they must read often. We will spend at least one hour each day reading and discussing quality literature. The students will record their thoughts about the literature in their reading response journal. Additionally, we will be conferring with your child weekly. During a conference, we ask a child to read a section of his or her book. We research how the child is reading, and teach him or her a relevant strategy. Some of the strategies we will work on are retelling, connections with our reading, sensory images, questioning, inferring and talking about books. As the year progresses, we will begin participating in book clubs. This means students will be reading in groups of three or four. They will be reading the same book and taking part in book conversations to further comprehension and proficient reader strategies.
WRITING WORKSHOP
It follows that for students to become more skilled writers, they must write often. We will spend one hour each day writing and discussing writing techniques. Additionally, your child will be asked to write in his or her writer’s notebooks nightly. The notebooks serve as a springboard to publishing writing pieces. Each completed writing piece is carefully taken through the writing cycle -- drafting, revising, editing -- focusing on the basic grammar and conventional writing skills, and then it is published.
Spelling instruction will take place in the form of weekly word study focused on spelling patterns. Pretests will be given on Wednesday with a variety of activities to be completed throughout the week ending with a post test on the following Tuesday. We will focus on students’ own individual lists each week.
HANDWRITING
Mini lessons on cursive handwriting are taught daily based on the district adoption of the Handwriting Without Tears program. Emphasis in handwriting is placed on neatness, legibility, and appropriate use of size, spacing and alignment.
MATH WORKSHOP
There are two parts to our math workshop period. The first is mental math. During this time, we work as a whole group on computational problems, helping to further develop our use of efficient math strategies. The second, larger, block of time is used for direct instruction of small groups. It is during this time that we present skills-appropriate instruction to each child. We will work from the Investigations math program, which includes challenging, context problems in which the students use a variety of strategies, and share those strategies with others. Students will be tested quarterly over their basic facts (with division beginning second quarter). Please be sure to practice these at home. Our job is to help engineer conversations which will further develop students thinking about and use of efficient strategies. Besides small group work, we individualize instruction by altering the investigations and context problems to meet the needs of specific students. Flexible grouping among all fourth graders may be implemented in order to meet the needs of all students.
TECHNOLOGY
We take as many opportunities as possible to incorporate technology into our instruction each day. Each year we spend six weeks on keyboarding practice. Also, it is our hope that again this year, we can utilize our myriad of technology tools to do everything from teleconferencing to researching, presenting multimedia projects to designing web pages, and more!
TOPIC STUDIES
SCIENCE / SOCIAL STUDIES
We are excited about the fascinating science and social studies topics we will study this year. Here is an outline of our studies this year.
Quarter 1: Government and Missouri
Quarter 2: Lewis & Clark, Civil War, U.S. Regions and major land forms, Cultures of Canada and Mexico, and Economics
Quarter 3 and 4: Electricity, Universe, Missouri animals, Living Systems
Students will be tested periodically on a section of the United States and their capitals. At the end of the year, a cumulative test over all 50 states and capitals will be given.