What is happening in 4th grade?

I know I have been a little quieter this year on all the happenings in 4th grade. I am sorry for that. I thought I would take a minute and update you about what we have been doing in 4th grade.

We have been studying the 10 commandments. We are about to start learning about the third commandment and how we can live it. This week we learned about Lent and decided on things we might prayer for, fast from, and give to others. They will be reflecting each week on how they are doing during these 40 days.

We are currently focusing on nouns. We will be hitting the end of our noun unit and reviewing as a class. Eventually a small test will be given to see if they have grasped plural nouns, possessives, proper, and common nouns. We also learned about determiners to help us find nouns in sentences.

Last week we finished up our study of Esperanza Rising. Students completed two projects in class and took a test on it as well. This week we have moved on to By the Great Horn Spoon. This is a gold rush adventure and will make a nice connection to what we are learning about in Social Studies.

We just took our test on measurement. It was an open book/open notes test and students seemed to do fairly well on it. They will be participating in some benchmarks so I can stop and assess how well they have grasped the concepts taught so far. Next up, FRACTIONS!

We finished up Chapter 4 yesterday and will start reviewing for our test next week. Students will get a study guide today and be given class time to start reviewing for the test. This chapter focused on Mexico taking control of Alta California and people starting to make their way to California by land. Our next chapter will be all about the Gold Rush. I am trying to book our trip to Rancho Buena Vista Adobe in Vista so students can see what rancho life was like.

We finally finish our informational writing on our mission. In class, we also wrote persuasive rough drafts about why people should choose Catholic schools. Yesterday we had some free writing with some pretty interesting little stories. We will be focusing on figurative language with our study of By The Great Horn Spoon and will be incorporating that into our writing unit as well. Students continue to work on writing summaries as we read and answering questions in complete sentences.

Thank you for your patience this year and for all you do for your children. They truly are a wonderful group of little people. Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you have questions about what is happening in 4th grade.