Thank You

This week, we learned about the parts of a friendly letter.

We used this information to write a thank you note. Our notes needed the date, a greeting, three sentences: "Thank you ..."; "I liked ... "; and "I appreciated ..."; all written in a paragraph format. We finished with the closure that should include, "Thank you", a transition ("Sincerely,",  "Love," etc.), and our signatures.

We used the writing process to write a rough draft, Ms. Leom helped us edit, a final draft, that we glued into a card we made, and then making our writing "published".

Next, we learned how to fill out an envelope. We learned about the return address and the forwarding address. Lastly, we walked to the office and mailed our cards. (Mr. G's class will be finishing the envelopes and mailing theirs thank yous tomorrow morning!)

Thank you!

Now that your students know how to write and address an envelope, encourage him/her to share his/her appreciation in the form of Thank You notes. A little support and practice can help your fourth grader develop a life-long skill!

Jan Brett

Children's book author, Jan Brett is coming to St. Cloud's Barnes and Noble on Sunday December 7th at 10:00 to promote her new book as reported in the St. Cloud Times.

Our school library owns over thirty copies of her beloved books! We are reading the books this week when we finish early in class. Ms. Leom's class is practicing our fluency to prepare for sharing these treasured books with our reading buddies on Friday afternoon.

Emotion Words

Today, we found ourselves looking at emotion words again. Often times, when we read, there are feeling words that are part of the story. Recognizing what characters are feeling can help us understand a deeper level of the text. We read the short realistic fiction story, "The Waterslide". We underlined clue words and made inferences to help us understand the feelings in the story. It was an interesting discussion. Finding the right word to express what we thought the characters were feeling was a challenge at times. We had seven feelings we found in one class and nine feelings were found in the other class. You can see our messy notes that we made during our discussion.

Another morning of learning in fourth grade Communications! (And this was just the introduction to our lesson!)

Book Projects

Today, we started presenting book projects. The first day is always slower, because it takes time to organize and many students benefit from being a part of the experience to appreciate how it works.

Here is how it looks like in Room E113! Ms. Leom pulls a random (tongue depressor-type) stick from her cup. That person is "up". The second stick she pulls, that person is "on deck". The student hands in the Book Project Approval Sheet for Ms. Leom to record comments and grade the presentation. Next, the presenter records his/her name on the board, the title of the book, and the project. Students in the audience are working on an "audience" paper. They record the information. They also determine if it is "a book I would like to read" or "I book that wouldn't be a good fit for me" by circling a "+" at the end of the book line or a "-". Students also determine if this is a project I would like (+) or one that isn't a good fit for me (-). The student begins the presentation. After the presentation ends, Ms. Leom takes a picture of each student and his or her project. "Hand models" may be used to include some specific pieces in the pictures. Ms. Leom picks the "on deck" name from her cup, and we turn to the "up" student and start our process all over again! Ms. Leom completes her comments, and makes copies to be able to input grades, and tries to return our papers by the end of the same day. 

These are today's presenters:

memory box

scrapbook

postcards

memory box

postcards

memory box

scrapbook

memory box

memory box

There were some amazing projects shared today! We LOVE how students can do the same project with different results. So many creative students (and families)!! We are excited to see many more tomorrow!!

Concert

On Wednesday November 26th the fourth grade students performed for their families and classmates. Here are some pictures of this fun event!

our crowd

two of our speakers

Ms. Leom's Class

Mr. Lundeen, Ms. Leom, and Ms. Hakes-Anderson's classes

Mrs. Eichoff welcomes us

Mr. Greninger's Class

Ms. Leom's students

musicians

speaker

Mr. Greninger's students

Mr. Greninger's students

a musician

many of our students playing recorders

close up

There were four students, only two were photographed without a hazy blur - Sorry!

Congratulations to everyone who was able to participate! It was a memorable afternoon show!

PIE Day

Today is PIE Day in Milaca Elementary's fourth grade classes! (What is that?! You may ask ...) It is a learning extravaganza! We are learning about Author's Purpose - or why author's write.

To start our lessons, Ms. Leom had her high school helper, Nick scoop out our pie samples. We had apple, pumpkin, and blueberry.

Our high school helper, Nick scooped our our pie

 Next, we watched Enemy Pie. Actress Camryn Manheim read the book and shared the illustrations with us in class.

Our learning strategies we are developing are SUMMARIZING INFORMATION and REALISTIC FICTION. This book allowed us to develop these skills. We were also able to tell this book was told from the first person point of view (the narrator was a character in the story, and it uses "I", "my", and more). We summarized the book. In Ms. Leom's class, we had a great learning opportunity, because it took us a long time to summarize the book. We had a tough time getting to the most important details. The extra ten minutes, helped us think-aloud and develop strategies (list ALL the parts you think are important. Combine and pare down the choices until you can retell the most important ideas in 2-3 sentences). In Mr. Greninger's class, the first student she called on, succinctly (in the fewest words possible) summarized the book. She wasn't prepared for it. Funny how sometimes the best learning comes from a struggle!

Next, Ms. Leom re-introduced us to Author's Purpose. We had a mini-lesson on it earlier in the year. We reviewed the three reasons author's write, gave meanings for each, and shared examples.

our work in process

It was time to move and be active learners. We made chef's hats, or "thinking hats" according to Ms. Leom. Once our hats were finished, we were able to taste test pie. We graphed our favorite kinds of pie.

graphing our favorite kinds of pie

Next, we took notes about author's purpose.

It is important that we review what we learn at the end of our lessons. It is also important that we know WHY we learn the strategies and skills. Being able to identify author's purpose is a strategy that successful readers use to understand a text.

Ms. Leom's class

Then - the best part of the day - Ms. Leom gets to share the "learning magic" with ANOTHER group of fourth graders!!!

para, Ms. Sherri helped scoop the pie

listening to the book, "Enemy Pie"

making hats

Mr. Greninger's class

So the next commercial, story, movie, book your child shares ... consider asking him/her the author's purpose. It is more than a learning extravaganza. It helps readers understand what they read. It matters!