Dear Fourth Grade Families,

We continued in our Human and Animal block taking a closer look at animals such as the eagle and the elephant. Through stories rich with imagery, we look at the physical characteristics of each animal and learn more about their habits and temperament. We also began working on our research reports by asking ourselves what we already knew and what we wanted to learn about the animal chosen. We learned about using a “hook” as the opening sentence in our first paragraph to capture the reader’s interest. This week, we will begin to write our reports. This process includes the mechanics of a five-paragraph essay, sentence structure, and also appealing to the reader. It will be a positive experience for the students, many of whom have begun to enjoy writing and are ready to add more form to this experience.

The students have been playing theater games throughout the week as we get ready to work on our class play. Twice a week, during our previous movement periods, the children work independently or in groups to act out various scenes while their classmates act as the audience. As the “actor”, the goals are to understand and experience themselves performing, feel the space around them, work together in their group for the success of the skit, take in constructive criticism, and practice performing for an audience. When acting as the audience for their classmates, the students can glean ideas of what works and why and apply that to their own time “on stage”. They also clearly see the need for groups to work together, practice being a respectful audience, and learn how to give helpful and thoughtful critiques. It’s been fun and quite entertaining, as you can imagine! Play details will follow soon!

Reminders:

Saturday, March 19th, is a Community Workday
Friday, April 1, is Grandfriend’s Day.

With gratitude,

Melissa