New Skills

Our big skills are Summarizing and Synthesizing. We took notes in class.

One challenge of asking fourth graders to summarize, they may have difficulty sticking to the main idea and details and being "succinct", so we are practicing!

Our other BIG skill is determining the author's purpose. We've read four stories this week to develop our skills. We continue to use clues and look for evidence.

 Then today, students were invited to write six sentences ... two sentences about persuading, two sentences about informing, two sentences about entertaining ... Their topic, any state of their choice. We brainstormed resources in our classroom (textbooks, postcards, picture books, our classroom library, and more), then we went to work!

All students have the challenge, if they were interested, to extend their learning. Instead of just writing two sentences, they could write a paragraph (topic sentence, two or more detail sentences, and a closure sentence) for the three reasons authors write (persuade, inform, entertain). It is interesting to watch who accepts the challenge.