4 Square in 4th Grade

Today we started our first big writing unit.  It's great to see how easily the students are catching on!  The 4-Square Method is a great way to learn to write because it gives you specific steps just like when we learned to read we started with decoding skills.    This method can be used for all the areas of writing that we are going to do:  narrative, persuasive, descriptive and expository.

Today we focused on how writing is organized from the big idea (main idea) to the subtopics.  

The students worked in small groups to come up with lists of things like people, healthy foods, board games and sports.  Each of the 3 subtopics went into it's own square.  The 4th square on the graphic organizer is for the wrap-up sentence.  There were so many great examples of wrap-ups:

"Apples, bananas, and pineapples are three healthy foods."

"Board games that are enjoyable are Monopoly, Life, and Guess Who."

"Hockey, Soccer, and Basketball are sports."

It's going to be exciting to watch our writing improve as we work through the steps in the 4-square method!

We will be back later this week to share more about what we are working on!  It sure has been busy as we continue to go Running Through 4th Grade!

Homecoming - Even more Pics

Minute to Win It games during the Pep Rally!

Our Arrow Pride Banner

Lunch with some awesome middle schoolers. 

A kickball game:-)

Homecoming - More Pictures

Homecoming Day at School (in pictures) 1st installment

Newsletter for the Week

It has been a great Homecoming week!  We are looking forward to spending Friday Afternoon at the high school.  It's exciting that we get to sing The Star-Spangled Banner before the football game.  See you there!

You can read this week's newsletter - HERE

Hero Day

We are lucky to have 90 minutes for math each day.  We are just getting started with our multiplication study and we are using those 90 minutes to the fullest!

The students came back from lunch today and we created all the possible dot arrays for 24:  1 x 24, 2 x 12, 3 x 8, and 4 x 6.

After the dot arrays, we began building arrays with unifix cubes.  We started with building all possible arrays for 4. 

We worked our way up to 16.

Ask your 4th grader if they can tell you how many arrays can be made for the number 9!

I love the way that we are learning and talking about our thinking EVERY DAY!  

We do so many fabulous things at Winskill that I don't always tell you about all of them, but dressing up for Homecoming is definitely a favorite thing for many of us.  Today was HERO DAY!  Check out these great idols that the 4th graders want to be like:  dads, moms, doctors, veterinarians, football players, and so many more.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I like to think that I'm pretty good about knowing what books are popular among my students.  I was quite surprised to see this American Chillers series in many of my students' hands today.  Since I hadn't heard of it before, I picked up one of the books and read a little bit. I was really surprised to learn that these books have been around since 2000. There are 40 different books in this series and then the author wrote a separate series called Michigan Chillers.  #7 is Werewolves in Wisconsin.  I'm definitely going to be reading a few more of these this month.  They are perfect for the Halloween Season!

This is a newer book.  It was published in 2012.  I love the maze like cover art and the adventure that occurs as the 3 main characters get caught up in this race against time.    What are you reading?  Take some time to get caught up in a book.  Finish at least one book this week!   In the words of Donalyn Miller, "Find time to read between the edges."