4th Grade Newsletter

• The school opens at 7:55 for free breakfast. Please make sure your child is in his/her classroom in time to get materials ready and eat breakfast if needed. Rotations begin at 8:25.
• Please join the FB page for your class- “Williamsport Fourth Grade” (Hood, Miller, Rishell) WES 4th Grade Magnet Class 2026-2027 (Grabenstein/Twigg)

Schools are closed Oct. 16th

Trunk or Treat Oct. 22nd @5:30pm

Picture Day Oct. 28th

End of the Marking Period is Nov. 2nd

Early Dismissal Nov. 2nd

Personal Narratives

📖In the first unit, students will read and analyze five personal narratives which will provide the jumping-off point for many of the activities in the upcoming weeks.

📖Students will be skilled at analyzing characters, developing themes, writing strong hooks and conclusions, and using descriptive and figurative language.

📖Through these direct lessons on the different writing techniques, students can practice and transfer skills into their own personal narratives.

📖The ELA classroom will include daily integrated instruction with reading, writing, speaking, and listening standards

🧮We are excited to begin our sixth year with the Illustrative Math curriculum.

🧮This math program is problem based and is filled with highly engaging lessons that will get students thinking, communicating, and solving complex real world problems.

🧮The first marking period we will focus on multiplication -- understanding multiples, prime and composite numbers, and learning strategies to help learn math facts. We will then proceed to our unit on fractions focusing on fraction equivalency and comparisons.

🧮Please make sure your child is practicing their math facts daily!

🧮Homework sheets will be given on Monday and are due on Friday.

🗺️The students will evaluate the impact of geography on cultural development and interaction by looking at Native societies.

🗺️The students will evaluate the motivations of European exploration.

🗺️The students will evaluate the impact of exploration on various groups.

In ELA, we will begin our new unit titled, Energy of the Past, Present, and Future. Students will follow the story of energy development in the United States, starting with the oil boom in Beaumont, Texas and ending with today’s energy needs. They will also conduct research, putting them in the shoes of future energy innovators. Students will read about current energy practices, and young energy changemakers. These include 19th century engineers who developed techniques to extract fossil fuels still used today, a Danish island run entirely by wind, and a young boy in Malawi who brought energy to his village with found materials.

Read approximately 20 minutes per night, any material of their choice. Record time on monthly reading log, along with parent signature.

For the next several weeks, we will continue our work with fractions. We will continue to work on fraction equivalency and strategies for comparing fractions. We will continue to work on reasoning and proving our answers using tape diagrams and number lines. We will then move to using what we know about multiplication to multiply fractions by whole numbers.

Students need to continue to practice math facts each night. They also receive a weekly homework assignment that is given out on Monday and is due on Friday.

In Social Studies, students have finished learning about several American Indian Tribes and how they traded, negotiated and and used resources to survive off the land among other groups.

We also learned about European explorers and the motivations that pushed them to explore. We used the the geographic factors and to help us understand what influenced those explorers.

• In Science, we will be learning about renewable and nonrenewable resources and how they impact the environment.
• We will also learn about how we transfer energy place to place and how energy converts from one form to another form.