Thank You for Two GREAT Years!

Dear Fourth Grade Families,

Thank you so much for the touching farewells yesterday! I am going to miss everyone so much! I have treasured my experiences here and will never forget them. I am so thankful to have had such wonderful students and parents; it has helped me tremendously in becoming a better teacher!

I genuinely hope to keep in touch with you all well into the future. I would be happy to receive updates from students and parents. I also hope that I might keep you updated as Mrs. Valentine and I find out about teaching jobs for next year.

Thanks again for everything! I will miss you!

Sincerely,

Mr. Valentine

Year End Writing Celebration!

Dear Parents,

Thank you for supporting your children at our End of the Year Writing Celebration! Students shared self-selected pieces they saved from 3rd and 4th grade. Our talented writers provided a nice assortment of writing styles and genres including: literary and persuasive essays, personal and fictional narratives, non-fiction, and poetry. We even had a special demonstration on making Korean Rolls! Delicious! I am SO proud of the writers the 4th graders have become and it is very rewarding for the students to share their talents with an appreciative audience!

Thank you to all!

Mr. Valentine

Poetry Celebration

Parents and Students,

Thank you all for your part in making our poetry celebration a huge success! Students took great pride in reading their poems and it was a true reward to have so many poetic strategies come together into such beautiful language! Students shared BIG ideas and feelings in small moments, objects, and places. They saw topics in fresh, new ways and made comparisons using similes and metaphors. Precise, honest word choice, and show, not tell details helped the poems come to life! Line breaks, rhythms, rhymes, and repetition created music that pleased our ears. The fourth graders can say with confidence, "I AM a poet!"

Author Backtalk Presentations

The fourth grade students did a marvelous job completing their Author Backtalk Presentations! We enjoyed a variety of presentation formats including: videos, interviews, poster presentations, Power Points, and a Voice Thread!

Students have learned to get inside the head of their authors, and that good readers have on-going dialogue with their author as they read. The fourth graders now think about: how the author's life influences their writing, author's purpose, themes, literary elements used by the author, how authors writing stays the same and how it changes between books, how ideas connect between between books, and what types of audiences authors write for.

I am SO proud of your incredible work fourth graders!

Invitation to Notice Dialogue Conventions

When writers use dialogue, they add voice to the story. There are many conventions to be aware of when using dialogue in our own writing, including: quotation marks, commas, paragraphing, end punctuation, and capital letters. Writers can study dialogue published in books as models for good writing patterns and strategies:

"Well you were brave, too," Laura said. "Even if it was only a stump, you thought it was a bear. You'd have hit him on the head with a club, if he had been a bear, wouldn't you, Pa?"
"Yes," said Pa, "I would. You see, I had to." Little House in the Big Woods, pg. 115

The English Language Lesson

Sometimes it's difficult to understand what it is to
be a language learner. Here are some examples
that prove learning English is not easy!

We’ll begin with a box, and the plural is boxes,
But the plural of ox becomes oxen, not oxes.
One fowl is a goose, but two are called geese,
Yet the plural of moose should never be meese.

You may find a lone mouse or a nest full of mice,
Yet the plural of house is houses, not hice.
If the plural of man is always called men,
Why shouldn’t the plural of pan be called pen?
If I speak of my foot and show you my feet,
And I give you a boot, would a pair be called beet?

If one is a tooth and a whole set are teeth,
Why shouldn’t the plural of booth be called beeth?
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught?
And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the
same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

Reasons to be grateful if you grew up speaking English:
1) I did not object to the object.
2) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
3) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
4) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
5) The farmer could produce produce.

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in
which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which
you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes
off by going on.
And that is just the beginningeven though this is the end.

4th Grade's New Science Webpage!

Parents and students, visit our new science webpage on magnets and electricity. There are discussion boards, activities, pictures, videos, and more! It's a webpage that we create together. Join in the conversation!