Maybe it's not quite Halloween yet, but the spiders are out there in all their scariness.

This week the fourth graders started working on their first personal narrative. They are writing about a pet dog that helps them or someone in some way. Here's one way the story could begin:

  His name was Jake. I'm pretty sure that was his real name although I never met his owners. He was the neighborhood dog that lived across the street. We had lots of fun together, but there was one adventure I'll never forget.

After finishing their rough drafts, the students will learn how to revise and edit their work until they have a final draft of their best writing so far this year. Stay tuned for more examples!

We are finished with Topic 2 in Math and about to start a unit on place value which should be mostly review. We'll see about that!

 Not as big as the fake spider in Room 17, but still spider season has arrived. Did you know you're never more than three feet from spider? Most are harmless!

We have been working on writing sentences of different types. For example, in the paragraph above you will notice a statement, question, and and exclamation. There is a fourth kind of sentence. Do you know it?

 In Math we are learning about factors and using tables to find patterns in groups of numbers. For example: See if you can answer the following correctly:

 

Ivan counted all the beans in a jar. If he counted the

beans in groups of 7, which list shows the numbers

Ivan could have named?

A

7, 14, 21, 24

B

7, 14, 28, 54

C

7, 14, 21, 28

D
14, 24, 34, 44

Tea on Friday, a long tradition for Room 17, warms and refreshes the young scholars of the fourth grade. Division dominates the Math lessons this week and next as we move forward, while continuing to review multiplication facts and learn to subtract with renaming or borrowing.

Join us for "Back to School" Night next Tuesday, September 24th, from 6 to 7 PM here in Room 17. We'll talk about a few projects and curriculum pieces, but mostly it is a chance for us to meet and check out the classroom.

In the meantime, have a good weekend!

Off to a great start, Room 17 fourth graders began the second of week of school yesterday. Right at the moment they are working hard on Math facts and subtraction with borrowing. While a lot of the first days is filled with review work in Reading and Math, it won't be long until the more challenging work begins. In fact, the kids are already learning to write and essay on their favorite dessert, and there will be more information and an example of such an essay soon. In the meantime keep doing the daily homework Reading assignment, and try to bring in a few current events from the newspaper, radio/television, or internet.

No Math Club today or for the rest of this year. Many thanks to Jack for helping us with our Math facts, long division, double digit multiplication, and fractions this year. We'll see you at the Volunteer Appreciation lunch!

MSP (Measurement of Student Progress) tests this week and next.The fourth graders made me proud today writing stories about "glowing shoes" for most of the day. Tomorrow it's Reading and next week it's Math and more Writing.

Think on this: Since 1956, no newspaper, network, or news agency has been able to correctly predict the outcome of all thirteen presidential elections--except for one group. Every four years for a half century, the quarter million children who vote in the Weekly Reader presidential poll have been right every time.

Chirping frogs indicate the onset of Spring in the Northwest. A particularly difficult bonus question-"double jeopardy"-was answered correctly this week by one of the fourth-graders after many good tries, including blossoming flowers, longer days, more sunlight, and new leaves on trees, to name a few. But for some of us, the sound of frogs in the spring is something special.