September 19th

Hello Parents

As we finish our fourth full week of school it's wonderful to see the students so focused on their learning and trying their best each day.

Reading
As readers, we have continued to develop our reading strategies through reading our just right books. We have focused on determining what is important by identifying the problem, main events, resolution and author's message in various stories.  Using this story map, students have practiced improving their summary writing skills. This can be a challenging form of writing for many students as they try to determine the important ideas, so we will be revisiting this skill throughout the year.

Writing
We have a very exciting week coming up, as students will be publishing their first narratives. We know that a good narrative writer:

• uses a timeline to plan
• uses a catchy lead
• shows not tells
• stretches out the heart of a story
• includes showing, dialogue, thoughts, action and description in each scene
• uses a catchy ending
• revises and edits their work 

These masterpieces will be on display in the hall later this week for your reading pleasure.

Math

Grade four students have started their new unit on working with larger numbers. Some of the skills we will cover include:

• reading, writing, recording numbers up to the millions
• ordering and comparing numbers
• place value understanding
• rounding up to the millions
• estimating
• word problems
• patterning

This unit will continue for a few more weeks.

Social Studies

Students are enjoying our Mapping the World unit as they learn how to use various mapping skills. 

Thanks for sharing your wonderful children with me,

Theresa