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This is going to be a fun and exciting year in the fourth grade. The students and I are going to be actively engaged in all we do and learn. Watersheds and water systems make up the core of our science education. The students will learn about the many facets of water: the water cycle, physical properties of water, and how we use and misuse water. With the help of SCEE, we will take an in depth look at the watershed. Students will even have the opportunity to construct their own watershed models. Along with the physical characteristics of the watershed, the students will look closely at the life that dwells within the watershed. They will examine the plants and animals that call the watershed their home, along with the adaptations each species needs in order to survive in their environment. By the end of the year, our learning community will look at how their daily activities impact our two local watersheds.
The topic of the watershed paves the way for our social studies, language arts, and math lessons. We will be able to bring our science lessons and knowledge to each of our other important subjects. As a learning community, we will be examining the nation that we call home from the viewpoint of each specific region. We will study the products, people, and agriculture of each North American region. Along with the nation as a broad subject, we will also take a look at the development of Pennsylvania from the Pre-European era of Native Americans, to colonial life in Pennsylvania, through the modern times. In language arts, we will continue to read both fiction and nonfiction literature. The students will have the opportunity to voice their opinions and share their favorite stories with our learning community. We will spend a great deal of time enhancing our writing, focusing on the writing process, sentence structure, and basic conventions. Each week we will tackle a new comprehension skill and grammar skill.
In math, we will be focusing on geometry, measurement, collecting, organizing, and presenting data. We will look at multiplication, division, and estimation. The students will take their multiplication knowledge and implement it as we study area and perimeter. Along with practicing our basic facts, daily, we will also cover fractions, probability, maps, and symmetry. |
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As the year begins, we are going be participating in a number of “Get-To-Know-You” and team building activities in order to come together as a family. It is important that we have a common understanding of respect and community within our classroom. Academically, we are starting the year with an introduction to the watershed. The students are going to be embarking on a number of hikes in order to gain knowledge of the watershed, life in the local water, and the local streams in general. They will be creating their own watershed model during this time.
We are jumping right in to social studies by examining the Northeast Region of the United States. This is a great time to examine the watersheds in the Northeast region and how they effect the local agriculture, population, and way of life. The students will have an opportunity to work in groups, researching and presenting a specific state from the Northeastern region.
With the start of school, it is only appropriate to tie in the theme of “friendship” into our language arts studies. As both a whole class and in guided reading, we will be reading and writing about the idea of friendship in various stories and settings. The students will be writing about their many personal experiences with friends. At the same time, we will be reviewing the writing process and conventions.
Math opens with a look at geometry and geometric shapes. This allows us to participate in many hands on activities looking at shapes and what makes them fit together. Organizing data is also an important topic at the start of this year. The students will be collecting, organizing, and graphing the favorite seasons, foods, subjects, and colors of our fourth grade family. We will also be practicing our multiplication, division, addition, and subtraction, daily.
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