Judaics with Shira

 

This week, fourth graders were joined by our JOCI fellow Tova. Tova shared their unique identity with students and invited them to create their own identity Venn diagrams. Students were eager to hear Tova’s perspective to share their own identities and experiences with their table mates. It was a very enlightening and respectful discussion and activity.

Humanities with Hilary

Dear Families,

What a whirlwind of a week we have had. New mask rules; picture day; finishing our writing unit; the end of the Revolutionary War; the end of our second round of book clubs …. woah! While these are not official pictures from Picture Day, here are two that I wanted to share:

 Reading:

This was our final week of reading Revolutionary War books, for book club, and working with partners. Students enjoyed the ability to learn more about the war in a simpler form. They collected SO MUCH information on people and events, thinking more about where others not listed were, such as what women were doing and where people from the Black community were. Here are some pictures of the class investigating these books:

Writing:

This week, we finished our persuasive writing unit — though  this type of writing will be continued in mini-units during the rest of the year. Students not only picked a person who is important to them (such as parents, siblings, babysitters, friends, dog), but they also worked to persuade us about WHY this person is important to them and someone we should know. The best part of the unit might have been our share this week, where they worked on their oral fluency to be convincing and persuading. Here are some shots from our internal publishing party:

Social Studies:

This week, we rounded out our American Revolutionary War unit by discussing spies in the war … and the Articles of Confederation. For the Articles of Confederation, think of this as the first draft of our Constitution or what helped inspire our Constitution. This document gave the central government limited rights, but it was a start! For spies, this group of students got VERY into this mini-unit! They loved hearing about what people did at that time to support the war, and found it so interesting that people used biases to help them succeed, such as the British Army not believing that women would be intelligent enough to be a spy. We learned about the Culper Spy Ring, which happened on our own island (!), that helped us succeed in the war. Not only did we learn about agent names and numbers, but different ways they got messages sent — such as written codes, invisible ink, and clothesline codes. This week, we started decoding codes about Henry Hudson, which will be finished next week for homework. Here are pictures of some kids working on deciphering the code:

Hebrew Heritage with Tomer

The 4th grade heritage group is thriving with their news project! They cover endless subjects and expend their Hebrew abilities even outside the class, interviewing people in school, other classes, and in Israel. 

Hebrew with Rimma

 

Math with Justin

Fourth Graders have finished their unit on fraction and are now learning about decimals. Students are learning about how decimals are actually fractions with base 10 denominators. We have looked at representing decimals using number lines and bar models. We have learned how to compare, order, add, and subtract decimals. We also looked at how we can convert fractions to decimals or decimals to fractions. Lastly we explored decimals using the online platform Desmos, which has great interactive materials and questions for students to explore the subject. In our next unit, we will study area and perimeter.

Here are some example decimal questions from Desmos:

Science with Sammi

This week we made bar graphs of our M&M results and wrote conclusions. I told students that they are now in training for 5th grade as they slowly learn written lab skills they will need next year. For this week, that meant writing conclusions that said more than if their hypotheses were accepted or rejected. It meant restating their hypothesis, adding data to support their findings, and being sure to answer the original question.

Art with Iviva

 

Music with Heidi

In Music class, Fourth Graders used the xylophone techniques and their pitch skills to begin to play the song Arirang by ear with partners. This week they also worked on reading a lead sheet for the song.