Thank you for a wonderful year and for entrusting me with your beautiful children. Enjoy your summer break!
Well, it is hard to believe the year is over. I have absolutely fallen in love with each and every child in my class. I truly think I had the most special groups of kids I have ever taught! I have learned so many things from these students and I am sorry to see them leave me. Just so you know, parents, I begged to teach fifth grade next year so I could be with them again. Not only did the administration say no, they demoted me to second grade! Just kidding, I did ask to leave fourth grade because my daughter will be in fourth next year and I did beg to go to fifth with your darlings. I don't feel like I'm being demoted to second. That will be a new adventure for me as I have never taught such little ones before.
Thank you for a wonderful year and for entrusting me with your beautiful children. Enjoy your summer break!
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To culminate our Chesapeake Bay unit, our students worked in groups to create a snapshot of the Bay. They had to include specific animals in their poster, as well as examples of human interaction, both negative and positive, with the Bay. The posters were gorgeous and the students practiced compromising as they solved disagreements that arose. What a glorious day! We were a little nervous as we left school that it would rain and ruin our trip. We could it have been luckier! The weather behaved and we had a gorgeous experience. I was on the Sigsbee with half the class and Mrs. Friedman sailed on the Lady Maryland with the other half. We were learning from the moment we boarded the ship. In small groups we created boats from aluminum foil, duct tape and Popsicle sticks. At the end of the day, we held The Great American Float Off and tested our boats to see which boat could hold the heaviest weight. In the morning, after we raised the sails, we learned about the Chesapeake Bay and some if its history. We observed our surroundings and discussed the many ways we use the Chesapeake Bay today. In the afternoon, we rotated between three stations in the afternoon: examining plankton, studying oysters, and testing water quality. We had an incredible time learning and having fun. Thank you, Parents, for supporting our Plant Sale, which allowed us to participate in this amazing learning adventure. In celebration of Black History Month, we have begun learning about the African American experience in this country. This unit is discussion-based, with follow-up activities where the children work together toward an assigned goal . We want the children to understand the difficulties inherent in the African American journey to freedom.
I can't help but think of the Jewish experience as we are having our discussions. As Jews, we are no strangers to persecution or hatred. In our discussions, I refer back to the theme of hope, which is present in the books we are reading for this unit, and in the stories of our own lives, which your students are sharing through their quilt squares. I want each child to have enough time to share his/her family message and their story, so sharing these squares is time-consuming. So far, we have heard a story about a couple who cold-called American families from a stolen phone book page until one family agreed to sponsor their trip to America, saving them from the fate of the Holocaust. We have heard about families from Europe, South America, and North America. The common theme so far is in the message of hope for a better life, free from hatred and persecution. I just want to update you on our Wonders of the World project. This is a comprehensive project that touches many modalities. We are currently writing the report. It is so exciting to watch the students as they put compile their notes into an organized report. We have completed the organizers for two of the three paragraphs. After we finish the final organizer, we will type the rough draft and work on polishing the reports. This last part is easy - the hardest part is organizing the notes and writing sentences for the organizers. This will be finished within two weeks.
We are creating the covers in computer class using some basic green screen techniques. This is an exciting technology experience for our students. After the covers are finished, we will be using Google maps to find our wonder (or the site of our wonder if it no longer exists). The last piece of this project is being completed at home as the students create their mini-models. We know this project requires your assistance and we appreciate your help and support. Please follow the size guidelines as our display space is very limited. As soon as the mini-model is complete, please send it in to school - we are looking forward to sharing each model. As soon as all the pieces are complete, we will be setting up a Wonders of the World display in the Berman lobby. I will let you know the dates as soon as we have confirmation. If you were to walk by room 203 these days, you would hear much talk of monsters. Your monster...my monster...his monster...her monster... It's almost all we talk about!
What does this have to do with fourth grade? We are learning about descriptive writing and how adding details makes one's written work more interesting to read and easier to visualize. Each child drew a picture of a monster. Then he/she wrote a paragraph describing his/her monster with as much detail as possible. I checked each draft and made suggestions to improve the paragraph. Finally, we are going to meet with a partner. Each child will read his/her paragraph aloud while the partner tries to draw the monster. Finally, the children will work together to make suggestions on how to improve each other's paragraphs. Once this process is complete, we are going to share our monsters with our 4x4 friends. The final step is going to be when they bring the monster home to share with you. Get your listening ears and magic markers ready... This project is creative and stimulating. The children are excited to share their monsters and motivated to write detailed descriptions. What more could a teacher ask for? I have to admit, coming back to school last week on Thursday was difficult. I mean really difficult. I was grouchy and unpleasant. The kids were still in vacation mode and in no mood to learn. The two hour delay on Friday only made it worse - it was a tease as to what should have been...all of us tucked cozily into our homes (preferably our beds) hanging out and relaxed.
I'm happy to say, this week was a thousand times better. We all came back to school ready to learn. And learn we did! We are continuing Greek mythology by practicing summary writing (for more info, click here). If you remember, before break, we studied character traits and character development. Having that piece of understanding under our belts, we were ready to tackle the challenge of writing a summary. And we are doing fabulously! We practiced by writing summaries as a class and writing summaries with partners. Next week I am going to assign each child a myth to read and summarize on his/her own. We have also begun our unit on expository writing. We are writing our Wonders of the World reports. It is amazing to watch the students flip through their notecards and organize their information into cohesive, descriptive, detailed paragraphs. This piece of writing will take a while. I am teaching each piece slowly to make sure everyone understands and will be successful. As usual, I thank each of you for the energetic, intelligent students you send to school each morning. We did it - we made it to winter break! We have all earned this little break.
We spent the last few weeks of school in a frenzy of activity. We completed a unit on adding suffixes to root words, completed our research on our assigned Wonder of the World and completed reading our Dan Gutman books. As many of you know, my spelling program this year is different from previous years. We are doing discovery-based spelling. I provide the children with word cards and they organize the cards to discover the spelling rules. The process takes longer than memorizing rules, but, by discovering and practicing the rules, the students are learning on a deeper level. They are then able to apply the rules more consistently to a wider range of words, instead of just memorizing a list of 20 words. When we return from break, we are going to begin writing our report on our assigned Wonder of the World. This is a major report and the results are always impressive. Finally, we completed our Dan Gutman book sand our study of characters. We learned about dynamic characters and static characters and analyzed the characters in our books. Click here for more details. When we return from break, we are going to immerse ourselves in the of Ancient Greece and Greek mythology. Woo-hoo! We can't wait!! Click here for a sneak peek. These past few weeks have been busy. With so much consistent school, we have hit the "meaty" part of the year earlier than usual. We have spent the past few weeks focusing on the literacy skills of sequencing, using transition words, and visualizing. These skills aid in comprehension and understanding texts. We enjoyed the culmination of our sequencing unit, as we created and enjoyed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
Click here to see a full description and pictures of our pb&j project. Click here to see a full description and pictures of our visualizing project. We have also finished learning about the tobacco economy of the Maryland colony. This cash crop was labor-intensive, draining on the land, and risky to grow. For the early colonists, growing tobacco was an all-or-nothing venture. To finish this unit, the students were divided into groups to create ostinatoes (repeated melodies or words) that portrayed the growing cycle of tobacco. The students were excited to display their knowledge through this musical vehicle. We are beginning to research our assigned Wonder of the World. We expect to be finished with our research by winter break. We plan on writing the report in January. We will send home inf I'll keep you posted as this project unfolds. I want to use this blog post to thank you, Parents, for the wonderful students you send to school each day. This class is a group of some of the kindest children I have known. I am constantly impressed at how far your children go each day to help each other, to give suggestions, and to work together.
This past week, we had our first Code Red drill. We discussed why we have this type of drill and our jobs in a code red drill. When the drill was announced at 9:45, the students quickly went to the assigned places and sat quietly. As I looked around, I could see some kids who were squooshed motioning to others to move over. Each child responded quietly to make room for the other. At the end of the drill, I saw children thanking other children for moving over. When we sat together to process the drill, we talked about this kindness before anything else. I was so impressed that this was our focus and not the scary reasons behind the drill or how it felt when we heard someone walking around checking to see if the doors were locked. In other classroom situations, I see these kids going above and beyond to help each other. One child commented that he had lost his pencil. From across the room, I hear, "I have one, let me sharpen it for you." One child was coughing and another walked outside saying, "I have a cough drop in my bag, let me get it for you." (That one I did not allow - only the nurse can give cough drops.) Other days, students ask me, "Can I work with so-and-so, she's having trouble and I can help her." Or I see a bunch of kids on the floor helping someone look for something that fell. Sometimes, this goes on in the middle of a lesson and I have to redirect everyone's attention. Of course what follows is a discussion on making good choices even in the context of helping a friend. We are working on this idea of making good choices at the right time. Still, the list of kindnesses goes on and on. So, thank you, Parents, for this wonderful group of sensitive children that I am lucky enough to teach each day! |
Amanda Levine
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