Reading
In March we will review for STAAR Assessment and start module seven in Reading. In this module, our class will build their knowledge about traditional stories, with a focus on story genres, such as tall tales, trickster tales, and legends. We will read texts and view videos about what lessons you can learn from characters in traditional tales. The genre focus in this module is traditional stories. You may want to discuss with your child the characteristics of traditional stories, such as they often teach a lesson and include characters that are animals or have exaggerated abilities.
Writing
In writing, our class will continue to write responses with relevant details that demonstrate understanding of texts in short and long constructed responses including comparing and contrasting ideas across a variety of sources. In grammar, we will focus on editing and revising to review for STAAR Assessment.
Math
This month in math, 4th graders will be wrapping up their unit on Geometry. During this unit students learned how to classify, measure, and draw angles as well as various attributes of triangles, quadrilaterals, and other polygons. The unit assessment will be given on the first week of March. After a restful spring break, students will begin our final math unit on understanding and converting units of measure for length, weight, mass, and capacity in both the customary and the metric systems of measure. This would be an excellent time to do some cooking and baking at home to practice measuring ingredients. Students can practice by measuring objects, or even people, at home then converting the units such as pounds to ounces, or inches to feet. This is also an excellent time to brush up on those multiplication and division skills so that everyone is prepared for the STAAR test next month.
Science
In science, students will collect and analyze data to identify sequences and predict patterns of change in seasons such as change in temperature and length of daylight in Chapter 8. We will also collect and analyze data to identify sequences and predict patterns of change in the observable appearance of the Moon from Earth. Then we will begin Chapter 9 about structures and functions of plants. At the end of the month, we will review for the Alief Interim Assessment #2.
Social Studies
In Social Studies we will continue Unit 5: Social & Economic Development in which we will focus on Texas’ economic growth. In the last lessons of chapter 8, we will learn how the growing oil and gas industries provided economic opportunities to Texas, as well as inventions and the growth of industries. We will begin a new chapter in which we will focus on the hard times in Texas during the first half of the 20th century. We will read about how events in the first two decades of the 1900s affected life in Texas.