Theme

This week our focus was on the different Themes in our class novel, Voices of St. Augustine.  Theme is the message or lesson the author wants to the reader to take away from the story.

Voices in St. Augustine

Students have read to chapter 13 so far in our class novel, Voices in St. Augustine.  As strong readers, we have focused on the "Big Ideas" and summarizing to check for understanding.  We also focused on the Idioms in the novel to clarify their meanings. 

Fiction Writing

We have focused on developing a well thought out plan for our fiction stories, making sure there is a story arc (heart beat).  Students tried again and again until their plan felt just right.  We have moved into the drafting process of our fiction stories.  We have drafted our stories scene by scene and studied other authors for ways to make our stories better!

Developing Characters for Our Fiction Stories

Students spent a few days this week picking one of their small moments and developing a believable character.  Students develop external and internal character traits as well has developing struggles and desires for their character. 

Where Fiction Writers Get Their Ideas

The discussions this week in Writers Workshop was about where writers get their ideas for fiction stories.  Students collected their own story ideas from small moments in their own lives.  They also collect story ideas from books they wish existed in the world.

Annotating from an Informational Text

This week in Readers Workshop, the students focused on how annotating an informational text helps them as readers understand the text better.  Here are some examples of how students annotated from the informational text entitled, "At Home in the Arctic".

Discussions were had in class about the guidelines for appropriate annotations.  We then as a class came up with our guidelines for annotating an informational text.

First Week of School

Wow!  The first week of school is already over!  We have been very busy this week learning all the CHAMPS behavior expectations for the classroom, hallway, bathroom, cafeteria, playground, and auditorium.  CHAMPS expectations create clear guidelines for acceptable behaviors in common areas of the school.  Here is an example of CHAMPS for independent reading in the classroom.

This week we also created a mission statement (a class pledge) as a whole 4th grade family (Barton/Ledford family).  Students set their own goals for reading and writing. Then worked together as groups to come up with one goal they could agree on.  All of these goals were then put into the mission statement which will hang in the room all year as a reminder!

Students also got a chance to partner share with some of their writing this week.  They were working on an opinion piece about whether school lunch was healthier or lunch from home was healthier.  Students had a great debate about this issue!