WRITERS WORKSHOP: PERSONAL NARRATIVE

A WEEK OF WRITING

This week in Reading the students spent the week learning the Four Square Method of writing a personal narrative.  The Four Square methods are where you plan your writing using four squares. The purpose of the Four Square Method is for students to plan an organized piece of writing. It can work with any style of writing. See below for more information. 

Most students this week wrote about a problem that they had to solve like a mystery.  They wrote their plan using the four square methods.  Then they had to get a "Workshop Buddy" to edit the paper. Then they typed their final drafts using Google Docs. And there were some pretty impressive stories. Ask your daughter/son what they wrote and let them show/read it to you. 

Great job gang! 

LITTLE PLANE ENGINEERS

Our first unit in Science in Engineering and Technology. So this week we took it upon ourselves to understand how engineers build things and look at three major characteristics:  1. Criteria  2. Constraints  3. Making Improvements.  So, after our discussion on Monday, we took the rest of the week to "engineer" paper airplanes.  First, this is the process we took: 1. Make the plane  2. We examined the things that make it fly. 3. Test trials outside. And we had some wind to factor in. 4. Analyze the first trials  5. Make ONE improvement on the plane. 6. Test the improvements/results. 

And THEY did a phenomenal job! Science looks to be REALLY FUN this year! 

FIRST WEEKS OF SCHOOL

The first few weeks of school have FLOWN by and I couldn't be any happier with my gang. In the last few weeks we have accomplished the following:

• Our class rules and procedures
• Our non-verbal cues to answer questions
• Out non-verbal cues to go to the bathroom, and if someone is bothering us. For example, our system is 1, 2, or 3. 
• We have started into our classes.  We are almost to Lesson 2 in Math of Chapter One-Place Value. We have started our first units in Social Studies-Geography and Science-Engineering and Technology. 
• We did a Science STEM lab on our first Friday by learning the Scientific Method and observing properties of a Twizzler. This was a tasty exercise as well !! 
• We are starting to use the Math program Prodigy and the features that offer us to enhance our Math curriculum. 
• We have completed our first chapter in Religion. 
• The class has exemplified the meaning of modeling for the rest of the grades on our floor with behavior and ways a class should be. 

Wow, that's a pretty impressive first couple of weeks I would say! I'm very impressed with this group and happy we are enjoying getting to know ourselves. 

If you have any questions or issues please e-mail me at bdougherty@ascsde.org 

Pictures of our great 4th Grade Class: