March Madness!

We have our own version of March Madness happening here at school! We are trying to finish up all of our projects and units before Spring Break so that we have a fresh start when we return!

Today we read what we were wearing!  I loved reading everyone’s shirts, hats and even a  few had words on their pants! We also had another all school Drop Everything and Read today.  A huge THANK YOU! to  all who have signed up for the Read-A-Thon online! We are hoping to win the prize for having our whole class signed up, so if you haven’t done this yet, please go to pledgestar.com/holmes.

In Reading Workshop we continued to read The Lightning Thief , as we read we are learning about different techniques that authors use when writing fantasy.  One technique we learned about comes from something that was written on the  Lenox Globe – Hic Sunt Dracones, which meant “Here Be Dragons.”  This was written to warn the  mariners who sailed the oceans about places that were dangerous, to stay away! We learned that this was symbolic as there weren’t really dragons,  but it meant “Look out!  You’re in dangerous territory – don’t go there!  We talked about how our characters in our books face metaphorical dragons, or inner struggles that they usually don’t want to talk about.  We discussed the “dragons” of the characters in Lightning Thief and students looked for dragons for the characters in their books.  We also discussed how most fantasy books are really about the struggle between good and evil. To do this we looked at what lessons the character learns and what lessons they teach us, to find the themes of our books.

In writing we spent the week completing our final copy of our research/informational books on the American Revolution.  I am impressed by all the hard work the students have put in to their books. They look amazing! The books will come home right before Spring Break. We are hoping to have the opportunity to share our books with other 4th graders and Mrs. VanderBroek’s 2nd grade!

In social studies we talked about the checks and balances that our government has in place to limit the power one branch could have.  We also went over the Bill of Rights and what the first 10 amendments are.  We will be doing more with The Bill of Rights next week.

In math this week we learned how to create and read line plots and answer questions based on those line plots! We did all of this using fractions!

Important Dates:

Friday – Sunday, March 30 – April 8 – Spring Break

Tuesday, April 10, 2018 – No school.  Professional Development for teachers

Tuesday, April 24– Link Up Concert

Friday, April 27 – “Dolphin” movie at Cinema Carousel

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