Owen's Marshmallow Chick by RJ

This is a book that I recorded using iMovie. iMovie is an app that lets you take pictures then record yourself and stretch the picture to match the words. We sent the video to a kindergarten class so they can read along.

Reading Celebration by Serafina

Our teacher, Mrs.Mills, decided we do a Reading Celebration by acting out a part we read in our partner reading book. When Mrs. Mills said acting I thought of all the funny things in my book. Everybody loves reading in our class. Some of the things people acted out were funny but everybody thought the coolest and funniest one was Dylan’s. It was fun acting out parts in our books and most partners had a lesson to learn from the part they acted, like to never give up. Everybody's story was different and had all different lessons. Also, for every partnership that finished acting, everybody else gave them a nice round of applause. Some of the partnerships didn’t just act like people, as in Stone Fox they were dogs. Acting out parts in our books was fun, scary, and exciting and also fun to watch. Our class did very well on our acting celebration.

Learning about Rising Stars of Inferences Post-Its by Lauren

When you're reading your just right book, you should put post-its in your book to have deeper thinking about your reading. Post-its are meant for you to stop and jot down what you are thinking. When you have longer thoughts, you write thoughts down in your reader's notebook. For example, you can do an EEG or you can stop and sketch or write long off of a idea. But when you do post-its those are for you to stop and jot your ideas, you should have evidence from the text or evidence from the book. 

If your goal is to write a 1 star post, it states an idea about the characters or it says an idea. In the book Sheila Rae's Peppermint Stick, for example, I could write “Sheila is rude” or “Sheila loves her peppermint stick”. If you’re ever stuck on how to start, you can use "I think…" or "________ is feeling…" or "______ is the kind of person who...."

If your goal is to write a 2 star post-it in your book, you should support the idea with evidence of words and actions like “Sheila got a chair and then she got 4 huge big books and then climbed up on it and stood on her tippy toes." To get started you can use "I think this because...and a part of the text that shows this is..."" and also… and…."

If your goal  is a 3 star post-it you should support ideas with more than one piece of evidence of words and actions. For example if my goal was to write a 3 star post-it, I would write “Sheila is rude because she keeps teasing her little sister. For example, she said "I will give you some if you can guess how many stripes it has," and she would not give her the peppermint stick." 

If my goal is to  write a 4 star post-it, I would write ideas about characters relationships using specific evidence in the text. For example I could write “Sheila Rae LOVES her peppermint stick. I know this because in the text it says Sheila Rae had a peppermint stick it was long shiny and had stripes she loved it and she did not want give some to her sister. I know this because she made obstacles for her sister to have some. Sheila Rae loves her peppermint stick because in the text it says, "Sheila Rae held the peppermint stick close to her body."" To get started you can use: "__________ and _________ are similar/different because...also..." or "__________ is ibn the story because.../____________ is in the story to show..."

 Rising Stars of Inference Poster

 An example of writing about our reading

Reader's notebook where you can sort your post-its and do other writing about your reading

(The photos above were taken and captioned by Lauren for her blog post.)

Author Posters by Marcus

Our author posters are important because they teach us what techniques the authors like to use. For example, an author I was studying used a lot of comparison & surprising fact or statistics.

The authors also teach by using goals. Goals are goals for the techniques. For example, help the reader grasp an abstract the idea (or describe/ show the scale/ parts of something).

Here are some pics of the author posters that we did in reading in fourth grade:

The photos in the video above were taken by Marcus during our nonfiction author study celebration. Each book club made a chart to teach the class about techniques commonly used by the author they studied and the goals for each of the techniques. Marcus compiled the photos into the video.

Book Fair by Jack M.

In the Knollwood library, there was a Book Fair from March 31st to April 4th. There was a family even on Tuesday night. People visited the Art Show, then they walked to the Book Fair. The library was full of families.

Did you know that the Book Fair is a fundraiser? Our school gets to keep some of the money from the Book Fair. Did you also know that you could get books for your teachers?

The Book Fair at Knollwood didn't have as many books as the one at Sickles, but there were plenty of good ones. One of the books I chose was Hunted, about four kids with these magic animals. Some books were so popular that they sold out, like World's Worst Monsters and Villains, and Jackpot. The Book Fair was a great event, if you didn't make it, you can come next year.

The photos in the video below were taken by Jack at the Book Fair.

Book Fair by Maisy

Are you looking for a book? Have an extra 10 bucks to spare? Looking for a book and don't know where to find it? The Book Fair is the place. It's where you can find bestsellers. You can even buy books for your teachers.

The video above includes photos taken by Maisy at the Book Fair. 

Research Celebration! by Maddie

I like to research animals because you learn more about the animal you choose. I chose frogs.

I got to learn more about frogs, like that some frogs eat other frogs! Some frogs also eat other insects or rodents.

My classmates chose a topic and for a couple weeks, we gathered ideas, facts, and things we didn't know about that topic.

My video will show my classmates' projects. Everyone included one idea from their notebook and added facts using a paragraph or boxes and bullets.

The video above includes photos and video that Maddie took during our nonfiction research celebration, during which each student shared a slide they created in a class slideshow on Google Drive. Each classmate has access to our class slideshow, and so can share it with their families at home through their Google Drive account.

Published Book Reviews

Room 101 has recently published book reviews on our class book review blog, Room 101's Must Reads. You can read our book reviews here: http://fourthgrade101bookreviews.blogspot.com.

We chose to review books that we have strong opinions about and knew well (i.e. in addition to having read all of the book we chose, we also had some writing about our reading in our reader's notebook that we used to begin to gather our ideas about the book). During this unit, we studied mentor texts (published book reviews), paying particular attention to the structure and language used in the book reviews. We learned that, in addition to the reviewer's general opinion, book reviews often include a partial summary, thoughts on the author's craft, quotes from the book, and a recommendation for the type of reader who will enjoy the book. 

Having just finished our Touch Typing class, we took the opportunity to type our published pieces for the first time this year. The class worked in the computer lab for one writing workshop period, typing in a document through their Google Drive accounts. Typing in Google Drive allowed students to finish publishing at home. 

We hope our reviews help you find your next book!

Wemberly's Ice-cream Star by Megan

I made an iMovie about the book Wemberly's Ice-cream Star. The reason I chose this book was because I liked the cover.

When I was reading the book, I had to think about not going too fast or too slow. I practiced reading the book until I thought it was perfect. I liked recording the book in iMovie. I hope you enjoy it.

Nonfiction Celebration

For the past month, we've been reading nonfiction texts and learning how to move from thinking about topics to thinking about main ideas that are supported with facts and details (i.e. evidence) from the text.

To celebrate this hard work, students chose a page of notes from their reader's notebook that they were particularly proud of and created a visual that taught an idea from the text with evidence. They added color to show meaning and may have included visuals. The work on each student's poster came from their notes on their nonfiction reading.

Before our celebration, students practiced teaching their reading partner and gave and received feedback to improve their presentation. They presented their posters to a group of three classmates. We ended the celebration with a gallery walk to share our notes and posters with the whole class.

The video below includes photos of the posters created as well as a few moments of the teaching happening.

The Debater by Sophie

For the past two months in class we have been doing two or three debates.

In the debates, first we read a book together as a class, having two ideas about the character and collecting evidence about why that character is being that way.

The photo above is of Sophie's evidence for two conflicting ideas, that the tree is strong and the tree is weak. She collected the evidence as we read The Giving Tree.

After that, we share some of our evidence with our reading partner. Soon, after that, we get in a caucus and order our evidence. Later, we get with our debate partner and we both get about two minutes to speak. Then we get with our caucus and figure out ways to fight back. After that, we get back with our debate partner and say what we came up with with our partners.

I think this is a good way to learn about perspectives because it teaches us that there is no wrong or right answer and many people can have different perspectives. Maybe if you get fifty people in a room, maybe they could all have different perspectives about the same thing.

The video above contains images and video from a recent debate. The video was compiled by Sophie.

Social Issues Celebration

For the past month, we've read with a focus on social issues. We grew the chart below as we read across many books this year, identifying in clubs or whole class conversations the issues, ideas, and concepts hidden in the text we read.

Our work during social issues focused largely on determining what each text taught us about the issues and then pushing ourselves to be the kind of readers who change our own ideas as a result of reading the text.

During this unit, in addition to returning to favorite read alouds and rereading them (many we know by heart, practically), we read Wonder by RJ Palacio. (We're sure you know this already, as it's been a favorite in our class and most likely mentioned at home by now.)

In Wonder, one of Auggie's teachers, Mr. Browne, has precepts for each month. Similar to our class agreement - our precept - If you work really hard and are kind, amazing things will happen - Mr. Browne's September precept was "When given the choice between being right or being kind, choose kind."

To celebrate our work for the past month on social issues, each student chose an issue, idea or concept from our chart and wrote his own precept. This felt like an appropriate way to end our time together. We share them with you in the video below.

The Closet by Arabella

Please enjoy Arabella reading aloud her picture book The Closet, an independent project of hers during writing this year. Arabella is both the author and illustrator of The Closet. 

Book Reviews

Room 101 published book reviews a few weeks ago. You can find our published reviews on our book review blog, Room 101's Must Reads: http://fourthgrade101bookreviews.blogspot.com/. Maybe your next read is hiding in one of our reviews!

The Amazing Book Fair by William

Every year Knollwood has a book fair from sports to cooking to comics and much, much more.

The kids at Knollwood and sometimes Sickles love the books a the Knollwood Book Fair, especially the toys.

There is a big night called Family night. Family Night is when your whole family can come and buy books.

Have fun and keep reading!

Note from the teachers: Thanks for the books you donated to our class library! They've already been snatched up to be read :).

Vocabulary by Arabella

In writing, we have these special words like grit and charred and lots of others. We have hand motions for the words. We have lots of different hand motions. We get a lot of new words and when Mrs. Mills or Mrs. Barnett don't know hand motions for the word, it's up to the students to come up with them, which happens a lot. A student came up with the hand motion for grit. 

Sometimes we play this game for the words during snack where someone does the motion and people guess what the word is that goes with that motion. The student doing it for the class calls on a person who knows the answer. This game is really fun. We get to play it a lot.

If you want to see some of the words, watch my video. There will be two people in the video with me. We are going to say the word and do the motion. We're going to say the word first and then do the motion and describe the word. So please watch the video :)!

Note from the teachers: in the video above, Arabella, Allie, and Alex demonstrate the motions for some of our vocabulary words.

Digging Deep in Our Reading: A Look at Some Charts

Perhaps the most important purpose for the charts we create with students during mini-lessons is that they become a tool for students to independently try the strategies that have been taught. An important part of the reading unit we've just finished (a unit that focused on characters and in which we also learned how to negotiate reading  and talking about a book with a partner) has been digging deep through writing, talking, and thinking about our reading.

Picture this: a mosquito skims the surface of McCarter Pond, maybe causing a little ripple in the water but, really, making no impact. Then, there's a duck that goes completely into the water, splashing around, even diving deep, down to the bottom, to try and find some food.

Earlier this fall, we related this image to our reading. We have a choice. We can choose to be mosquito readers, skimming the surface of our books, going quickly from page to page or book to book, not pausing to think deeply about our reading. Readers who read like mosquitoes aren't changed by their reading. Or we could read like ducks, digging deep into our books by stopping to think, talk, and write about our reading. In this way, we'd read in a way that allows books to change us, to give us new ideas.

Thinking, talking, and writing deeply isn't an easy task. Simply: it's hard. It's easier to stick to the plot of the story, missing the chance to really have ideas. What's harder (and, therefore, as fourth graders in our room know, has bigger pay-off for a reader) is to really dig deep, thinking about our ideas and supporting them with textual evidence.

We've been learning when to stop, think, write, and talk about our reading and also how to do this most effectively. We'd like to share the charts we've been using in class so that it may support talking about reading in a deeper way at home. Our readers have had a lot of practice borrowing phrases off of the chart and using them as they think, write, and talk more deeply about their reading; we are sure they'd be happy to teach you how to use the charts.

The first chart is a chart that helps readers know when it often pays off to do some writing about their reading. The column on the left lists (some of) these different times; the column on the right gives a vision for different ways the writing about reading at that stopping point could go.

The second chart is from our character unit and shows some of the strategies taught during mini-lessons. Under each strategy are a few post-its that students have been using as they've done their own writing and talking about reading.

Hope this helps you dig deeper in your talk with your child about his or her reading. Now, we're on to nonfiction reading!