4th Grade Unexpected and Extraordinary Kindness Week!

By , 01/26/2018

Dear Fourth Grade,

This week marks our first attempt to participate in 4th grade “Unexpected and Extraordinary” week. This week and last, we spoke about the meaning of these quotes in our community circles. In addition we are reading and rereading our mentor text for realistic fiction writing, Each Kindness.

We decided as a group that the security guards, nurse, janitor, children who attend ABLE, lonely, and third graders who will take the ELA were in need of kindness. We broke up into groups and brainstormed simply unexpected and extraordinary things we could do. 401 will do them on Monday morning during community building and 402 will do them on Wednesday. Children made fidgets for the ABLE kids, letters of appreciation to the janitors, nurse, Principal, and we are planning on bringing in hot chocolate for the crossing guards and green tea for the Janitor.

According to the authors “Kindness changes the brain by the experience of kindness. Children and adolescents do not learn kindness by only thinking about it and talking about it. Kindness is best learned by feeling it so that they can reproduce it.”

Here is an article that helps illustrate the importance of directly teaching kindness.

Housekeeping

I sent home permission slips for the field trip to Historic Richmond Town. Please have them back by Friday, February 2nd.
Students are in the midst of researching a chosen European explorer. Feel free to purchase or go to the library to supplement the books we have in class. I am putting a packet together of texts that we have read for you and your child’s reference and other materials that will help write his “Explorer Journal.” We will begin writing it in class on February 12th. It will be due the Friday after the winter break. I will post the publish date onto school loop.
(*I am publishing this earlier than my Monday blog, so that you have time over the weekend to make or buy the treats for our “Unexpected and Extraordinary” week of kindness.)
I am sending home today the graded multiple choice practice ELA. I am also sending home the “key” to look at it, with your child. Take a look at it. Are they better at narrative or nonfiction. What “kind” of questions are they getting wrong. *inference, main idea? The test I gave them was a compilation of a few years of released questions. You can find that link here and here for your reference here is the structure of this year’s test.