Bonus Thursday!

Since we have recently switched reading/writing classes around, I thought it might be helpful to touch base an additional time this week.

Math: Today marked the "official" start of 4th grade math - up until now, the concepts have been relatively easy to pick up on. However, today we took our understanding of "mean" a step further and worked backward with it...imagine the "mean" family members per student in a group of 5 was 4. Considering that typically every person in the group doesn't have an equal number of family members, how could you "redistribute" the number of family members yet maintain the same mean? Well, using chips to represent family members, we each took a different amount from the pile of 20 until all of the chips were gone. Sometimes a person or two didn't have any chips, and other times the chips were somewhat equal but not quite. In the end, it doesn't matter because the TOTAL number of chips doesn't change - nor did the number of people in our group. Thus, the mean is still 4. Confused? Ask your child to show you what we learned with Cheerios or coins...

Homework tonight is a simple line plot worksheet. We do have a quiz tomorrow so you should expect to see it tomorrow night.

Language Arts: We established WORD STUDY journals today and selected words from a class list. The sound is /ee/ but the letter patterns vary greatly. They have 12 words on their personal list and these should be spelled perfectly in their journals (I initialed them). Inside their journal you'll find a schedule and list of activities that should be completed before Friday, September 25th. On this date, they will enter their words correctly in their personal dictionaries and will be expected to spell them correctly in their written work.

Bread and Jam for Frances - Tonight they should finish reading the story and mark places in the story where they can make a MEANINGFUL connection.

Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears - Tonight they should identify traits exhibited by the iguana and mark places in text that support/prove why this trait is accurate.

Miss Rumphius - Tonight they should identify traits exhibited by Miss Rumphius and mark places in text that support/prove why this trait is accurate.

Writing: We added some additional topics to our topic lists, chose one, and began webbing details, feelings, and possible sensory details to include when they begin their draft tomorrow.