Busy Busy Busy

Time is really starting to move fast!  It is time for our fourth graders to buckle down, study harder, and get ready for the state test while there is still time.  Summer is a terrible thing to waste in remediation at summer school.

• 1st Period - Science with Ms. Galan.  They are working on electricity and magnetism.  
• 2nd Period - Class Novel - The Indian in the Cupboard.  We reviewed what happened in Chapter 1 and then we read Chapter 2 - The Door is Shut.  We had a great discussion about the writer's craft and how the writer used not just commas to include more information, but also used ( ) to break up the writing and not be repetitive.  We also discussed the interesting British words we are learning and figures of speech.
• 3rd Period - ReadyGen 2B.12 - We finished reading the text Northwest Coast People and had a deep discussion about how important the format of informational text was.  How the headings, subheadings, and illustrations really help the reader understand the text.  We then looked at how the introduction of white people negatively affected the native people of the Northwest.  We then discussed the writing assignment and how the students had to look at two different sections of the text and use a venn diagram to write down what was interesting in each section, and in the middle what was interesting in both sections that was the same.   This is getting the students ready for comparing and contrasting texts.  
• 4th Period - GoMath Chapter 4 Performance Task.  It is discouraging that when students are asked to perform during practice on a daily basis, they do pretty well.  But when they are asked to do a performance task, they seem to stop reading closely and forget how to do what they have been doing.  Today I decided to read each question and purposefully "ASK" what the questions were asking and what they had to do.  Don't get me wrong, I didn't answer any questions - I just made sure they READ the question - understood the task - and let them do the work.  I hope that this helped because I need them to understand they are capable and smart students.  They need to start taking ownership of this task.  
• 5th Period - Waggle Math - While most of the students worked on Waggle, a small group of students worked in the tables at the back to complete their performance task.  I worked with a few students who were challenged to support them as they productively struggled to understand and finish the task.
• 6th period - Lunch
• 7th period - I let student teachers work with struggling learners on finishing their performance task.  The rest of the class came to the meeting area and we looked at student homework to share their responses to the opinion prompt they were tasked at responding to.  We looked to see if they "Restated" the question, "Answered" the question (gave their opinion/claim), "Cited" their evidence, and "Explained" their reasoning.  We ended the day by starting our Chapter 3 social studies test.  

Homework:

1. Writing:  Complete the Venn Diagram listing what makes each section of Northwest Coast People interesting and different, and what makes it the same.  This is prewriting for tomorrow's writing assignment.
2. Reading: Independent Reading book must be finished and tested on by FRIDAY!
3. Math: Division Practice Kumon page #10
4. Social Studies:  Take home and finish the Chapter 3 test