Dear Fourth Grade Families,
We enjoyed having all our class back together this week after last week’s slower start! Our new schedule is keeping us busy and learning! This past week, we moved back into a language block focusing on the Norse Myths. We reviewed the parts of a paragraph and practiced writing paragraphs with a topic sentence, three or more details, and a closing sentence (conclusion). Our spelling words focus on contractions. The class is studying not only words on the list (this list is posted in our Google classroom), we are practicing many other contractions as well.
This week, we will continue hearing more Norse Myths, which the class as a whole enjoys thoroughly! We will work on writing independent summaries of the stories, continuing to focus on writing a cohesive paragraph with appropriate detail, spelling, and handwriting. We will also focus on drawing illustrations to support our writing.
As a class, we had an interesting (and hopefully insightful!) conversation last week about the influence of movies and videos on how we think about the gods and goddesses (and many other things) compared to the ability to use our imaginations based on the text descriptions, and the value in the latter. Media, including the illustrations in books, tells us how things look according to another’s view when it comes to non-factual imagery. Much of the class was surprised that no one knows for certain what Loki and Thor actually looked like, and, for some students, that Loki likely was not green, as depicted in a modern show.
As a reminder, our Waldorf-inspired school greatly values and encourages low-media households as it benefits students in multiple ways. Many influential technology leaders send their children to Waldorf schools and minimize the use of technology in their homes! They create and manage technology for the world and simultaneously understand the benefits of limiting its use for children to their benefit. Please do your fullest at home to help follow this practice and you will enjoy similar benefits for your children!
With gratitude,
Ki Melissa
