Vote for Mrs. KK! Only 2 Days Left!!

Our own Media Specialist, KK Cherney, has been nominated for the Alferd Williams Literacy Award for her hard work inspiring us to love reading! This award is a huge honor and no one deserves it more than our KK!
To vote for Mrs. KK and learn more about Alferd Williams please visit http://www.scholastic.com/literacyaward/ . You can visit and vote until September 30th when the voting closes. Let's help make our Mrs. KK feel as special as she makes us feel everyday! VOTE FOR KK!

Cultivating our Reading Strategies!

During Independent Reading, we have been spending lot of time practicing ACTIVE READING STRATEGIES. These strategies help to keep us engaged in the text and cause us to think while we read. We are learning that reading isn't just knowing the words on the page, it is thinking deeply about those words. So far we have focused on three reading strategies. Last week as I walked around during Reader's Workshop, and I asked the students to share their thinking with me. I wanted to know how they were using these strategies.

1. The first strategy we learned is QUESTIONING. Asking questions while you read is important because it helps readers set a purpose for reading. It also helps hold our attention and and keeps us focused.

The student below was reading a non-fiction book about the Aztecs. He showed that he was thinking about what he was learning by questioning the effects of strangers entering the Aztec city. What a deep thinker!

2. The second strategy we learned is PREDICTING. To use this strategy you must stop while you are reading and use clues to guess what is going to happen next.

The student below is reading Ralph S.Mouse by Beverly Cleary. She told me that one of the main characters, Brad, had broken Ralph's (the little mouse) motercycle. She was thinking that he might buy him a new one. She is one strategic reader!

3. The third strategy we have learned is CLARIFYING. It means to go back and reread. This is a very important strategy to practice because it helps us clear up any confusion we may have as we read. As you Clarify, you may have to reread a word, a paragraph, or a couple of pages to make sense of something that confuses you.

The student below was reading Masterpiece, by Elise Broach. This book is one of our Battle of the Books Titles!

She was clarifying an event in the story that she had read previously. This strategy may help her once the Battle of the Books comes around because she will certainly understand what she has read!

Next week we will practice our summarizing strategy. Keep up the good work! And remember, you aren't READING if you aren't THINKING!

Elementary "My Dear"

Read-Think-Explain

Our students are learning how to respond to a test question in an essay format which they will have to apply on the Reading FCAT. This is an example of a 2-Point Short Response. Our goal is to answer this type of question in approximately five minutes. Students are to use the key words from the question and restate the question in a topic sentence. They are to answer the question and support it with details from the text. Here is a student example of a Short Response Read-Think-Explain that earned full credit, 2 points.

Why did Dad keep putting things in the wrong places? Use information and details from the story to explain your answer.

Dad kept putting things in the wrong places because he was so exhausted from waking up in the middle of the night to take care of his newborn baby daughter. As he shuffled around the house in his slippers, he tried to pick up the messes of Grandma Ana and his young son, but he was so tired that he would misplace things. For example, he put toy police cars in the refrigerator along with laundry detergent. Dad put the milk in the laundry room. Dad's sleep was disturbed by the newborn baby crying and wanting milk in the middle of the night. Dad was lacking in sleep.

Another Example:

How does the narrator MOST LIKELY feel about growing up? Use details and information from the poem to explain your answer.

The narrator most likely feels like she might miss some things about her younger days. In the text, she questions if the squirrel was glad to be up so high or if he wished he were closer to the ground. This made her think about herself growing up and leaving something behind and possibly missing something that she once enjoyed when she was younger and smaller. The narrator thinks that growing up might cause her to miss her youth.

Changing Pitch and Volume

Follow the prompts for changing pitch and volume. Leave a comment to tell us how you did it (if you are successful) and earn some Behavior Bucks!



Since this activity box is very small, you can CLICK HERE to go to another website that has this activiy on a full page. Just remember to come back to the blog to leave your comment when you are finished exploring so that you can earn Behavior Bucks!

Florida Geography Projects

Florida Geography Projects are being assigned on Monday, September 13th and will be due on Friday, October 1st. The purpose is to have a fun and meaningul way to culminate all that we are studying in our first 6 weeks of Social Studies (DOSS) about Florida's Geography. Each student has a guideline with all of the expectations for this "at-home" project. The above slideshow highlights a few examples of projects that have been completed by Chets Creek 4th Graders in the past. They are provided simply to give you ideas on how you might proceed, however, we encourage creativity and artistic uniqueness on this assignment. This project will count as a test grade in Social Studies for this first nine weeks. Have Fun!
Love,
Mrs. Phillips

The Four Corners Team has Grown!

A whole new crop of students is helping our garden grow this year! We are so lucky that these students joined our Four Corners Team. Check out each of our new student's pictures below to learn some fun facts about them!

This student is a great leader and role model. His favorite subject is Reading!

This student went to New York this summer. He loves playing football.

This student likes riding bikes and playing outside. He is a great basketball player!

This student's favorite subject is Math. He loves the movie Karate Kid.

This student enjoys swimming in his free time. He is also an awesome skateboarder!

This student loves Writing class. You may find her shooting hoops at recess because basketball is one of her hobbies.













This student is very sweet and a good friend. She is a wonderful helper too!










This student loves books! Her favorite subject is Reading. She went tubing down the Ichetucknee River this summer!

This student is a talented basketball and football player. His favorite subject is math!

This student enjoys movie premieres. He also knows a lot about St.Augustine and is an excellent Math student.

This student loves Math. She is also a fabulous dancer, singer, and actress!

This student also visited Ichetucknee this summer. He is an awesome soccer player and loves learning Social Studies!

This student love amusement parks. His favorite subject is Math.

This student is really funny and a good friend. He is a Chets Creek native!

This student is a very hard worker and very considerate of others.

This student loves the Tower of Terror at MGM Studios and her favorite subject is Science.

This student loves to dance and is awesome at jump rope!

This student's favorite movie is Spongebob. He is really good at Madden Football.

This student loves learning about animals, especially reptiles!






Now that you know more about our new classmates, be sure to introduce yourself to any of these students you haven't met yet, and welcome them to the Four Corners Family!

A special thanks goes to our Student Reporters who interviewed our new friends. You did a great job Emily K., Sarah, and Andrew F!

Math Homework Highlights

As mentioned in our weekly newsletter, the first three weeks of math homework serve to review concepts and skills from 3rd Grade. Homework is designed to take students approximately 10-15 minutes to complete each night and is reviewed in class each Wednesday (discussion of Monday and Tuesday content) and Friday (discussion of Wednesday and Thursday content). As we have in-class discussions of the homework, Mr. Pinchot and Mrs. Phillips facilitate the discussions around strategies the students are using to complete the problems. These strategies are highlighted on the document projector and students are required to take notes in pen so that they have accurate and helpful information to reference later on. Misconceptions are also addressed when students approach problems incorrectly, as our philosophy is "Mistakes are LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES". Homework is not graded, however, every three weeks a Homework Quiz is administered (which will count as a test grade) so that students can demonstrate mastery of concepts and skills that have been addressed.

How thorough is my child's approach to homework?
*Does your child take 10-15 minutes to complete each assignment?
*Does your child take thorough notes in pen each Wednesday and Friday in class?
*Does your child reference notes from previous homework assignments as needed and use these notes to study for quizzes? (This Friday, September 10th will be our first Math Homework quiz of this school year.)
*Does your child attempt every problem? Does your child refer to the Math reference pages in the front of the planner, or ask a "Study Buddy" or teacher for direction when help is needed? Mr. Pinchot and Mrs. Phillips are available before and after school and you are always welcome to email us with questions and clarifications also.

Current Topics of Focus
Factors, Multiples, Arrays
**Click the "Factor Game" (in the Math Links section to the left) for a challenging game in working with factors!
Factors are numbers that are multiplied together to get a product. (3 x 4)
Multiples are the product of two factors being multiplied together (12). Multiples are synonymous with skip-counting. (ex. Multiples of 3 are 3, 6, 9, 12... Multiples of 4 are 4, 8, 12...)
Arrays are a model used to see the relationship between factors and multiples. In the array below, a 3 x 4 array has a total of 12 square units.
Multiplication and Division Word Problems
To distinguish between multiplication and division word problems, our focus is to visualize the problem. All problems involving multiplication and division involve "groups" of items. We also ask ourselves if we know the total number of items. If we know the total, we will divide. If we do not know the total, we will multiply the number of groups by the size of each group to find that total.

Patterns
All of the patterns we are studying right now involve whole numbers. If they are ascending (numbers getting larger), we need to determine if the "rule" is addition or multiplication. If the numbers are descending (numbers getting smaller), we need to determine if the "rule" is subtraction or division.

Perimeter and Area
Perimeter is a measure of the distance around a figure.
Real-World Examples: fence around a backyard, frame around a picture

Area is a measure of the number of square units within a figure.
Real-World Examples: grass covering a back yard, tile covering a kitchen floor

Our new math standards have adjusted the formula we use for finding area from "length x width" to "base x height". The approach is the same. If we know both dimensions (of a square or rectangle), we simply multiply the two dimensions together to find the total area (number of square units in the region).

Happy Homeworking!!
Mrs. Phillips :-)

A Glimpse into ELA

What Have We Been Doing In Skills Block?

We have been working on Write For Today, which is daily practice in learning editing skills in our writing. This week, we have been learning about proper nouns and capitalization, -ed suffixes, there, their, they're, and commas. We have also been working on Read For Today, which is a “warm-up” daily reading where we practice careful and critical reading by using our reading strategies.

We are also learning how to write Cursive every day, by practicing each student's first and last name.

How Do We Respond To Our Independent Reading Literature?

We respond to our independent reading by writing a one sentence summary for each chapter in our Reading Journal. This is finding the MAIN IDEA of each chapter and will help us become proficient readers. By doing so, we track our reading and it helps us remember what we read. You know what’s cool? Our teachers read our summaries and write us notes about the book we read. They ask us questions, and we get to respond back. It is pretty neat writing notes back and forth to our teachers.

A Peek Into Independent Reading

Oh, to sit back with a great book and snuggle our cuddly little stuffed animal friends with classical music playing softly in the background…It doesn’t get any better than this!! Independent reading time is the best! Books take us to faraway places, and we get to meet all kinds of characters. We just love this precious time to get lost in a great book.

Painting A Picture With Words In Writers Workshop

After reading our book of the month, Otis, we used this mentor text to write descriptive paragraphs. Since we are studying nouns, we wrote about people, places, things, and ideas from this book. We wrote a descriptive paragraph on the main character, Otis. Then, we wrote a descriptive paragraph on the setting which is a farm. After that, we wrote a descriptive paragraph on the big yellow tractor which is a thing. Finally, we wrote about the idea of friendship which is the theme. We are learning that to write descriptively, we need to use our senses. Now, we can write a paragraph with a topic sentence, lots of supporting and sensory details, and a concluding sentence. (If your parent writes us a comment on this post, you, the student, will receive $10.00 in Behavior Bucks to spend at our Auction. We want all of our parents and students to read our blog daily.)