Dear 4W Parents and Students!
UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE! January 22, 2001
Just wanted to add a quick note to let you know that I have assigned the new book report. We all will be reading biographies -- your children selected them last week. The project is two-fold. Your children will answer a series of questions about the person's life in a short report and also create an outline highlighting 5 to 10 important events from the person's life. Look in your child's homework folder for the assignment sheet. The report is due on Friday, February 9.
We are also on the verge of beginning our Native American research. Each child will be researching a tribe or region. They will be assigned their topics today and we will work on this in class. I will forward to you some URLs that you can take a look at at home with your child. The resarch project will involve notetaking as expected, but the report will be presented via HyperStudio on the computer. We expect to spend several weeks on this project.
That's it for now!
Tatiana
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Welcome to our new communication experiment!
I learned about this website at a workshop I went to last week. It was taught by my former cooperating teacher and long-time Brookline Technology Director Jane Manzelli. I thought it would be an exciting way to update you about 4W activities without having to go near a copier -- whew! I hope you will find it useful.
We came back from vacation to an exciting curriculum all around! In Language Arts, we have begun reading Dear Mr. Henshaw, the Beverly Cleary Newbery Medal Winner. As we read it, we are focusing on character description and development, vocabulary and questioning techniques. You may have noticed that we are asking students to read a portion of the book and then reread it. We believe that good readers reread so we are trying to get students in the habit of doing so to better understand the text. We are also having students take notes on stickies during that second, closer read.
Because the book is a compilation of letters, we have begun working on personal narratives. Students are being taught to use graphic organizers to help them organize their thoughts. We will work on writing paragraphs with details and evidence, stringing paragraphs together into an essay and transitioning well between ideas.
We are also reading aloud a book called The Beaded Mocassins. The book nicely complements our Social Studies currriculum and gives us another opportunity to respond to reading. You will notice that your children are asked to write about Mary Campbell, the character in that book, at least once a week.
You may be wondering about book reports. Wonder no more as another one is on its way. We are thinking about assigning a biography and doing a timeline project with it. details TK.
In math, we have just begun an exciting new unit called "Seeing Solids and Silhouettes." It is a fun, hands-on unit where children learn to see 3D structures and 2D drawings from different perspectives. More importantly, children will be taught to write good directions -- a fabulous skill indeed!
You may have noticed the return of the Math Journal in a different form. The math problems we had been doing were a little difficult for the children. Thus, I have chosen to give them a set to easier, algebra poems. The children still need to write a step by step explanation of how they solved the problem, which is the skill we were concentrating on, so I feel the change is a good move.
Have you seen our wondeful "buffalo skins?" Our Native American legends are on display on two bulletin boards near the main office. Told in pictographs and English, the legends are just fabulous. They are well written and include all the elements needed: trickery, magic, a Great Spirit, animals, and a lesson or a moral. Your children outdid themselves. Please give them a huge pat on the back.
We will be taking our legends a step further in the coming month. Jeremy Solomons, Heath's artist in residence, will be joining our class once a week to help us dramatize the legends we have written. I will let you know when you can join us for what will no doubt be a wonderful presentation!
Our next social studies project will be our Native American research, which we will start in about a week. Students will each research a tribe, using books and websites. After gathering notes, we will write our "paper," which will not be a paper at all. Using a computer program used Hyperstudio, students will create a series of slides about their topic. They will decorate them using images they downloaded from the web, scanned in, or drawn themselves. I am excited about this project. Students worked on a Hyperstudio stack on themselves to learn to use the program and those stacks are lovely. Imagine what the Native American ones will look like!
As we read our social studies text, we have been working on strategies for reading non-fiction texts. Specifically, we are learning how to determine importance and how important information differs from interesting information.
We have also started our Rocks and Minerals unit in science. We will be working on the scientific method of inquiry and observation skills during this unit.
We are blessed to be working with so many wonderful people on all these projects and units -- our class learns so much just from collaborating with others! Names you may recognize: Ms. Howard, a learning center teacher who joins us for math and language arts each day; Ms. Dunn, a social work intern who works with us once a week on the Bullyproof curriculum; Mr. Solomons, our artist in residence who worked with us to prepare for the MLK assembly and will work with us on legends and poetry; Ms. Haberman, a reading specialist who joins us for language arts three times a week; Mr. Young, the system's social studies coordinator. He will join us next week to kick off our research unit with lessons on taking notes. This is a world that requires we learn to work with lots of different people and we are getting a lot of practice!
Well, I think I am done with the first chapter of my tome. Please let me know what you think of this communication method. Please note you can email me right from the page. When we begin our Native American Research, I will post some URLs here for you and your children to explore.
My best,
Tatiana
January 11, 2001
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