Lots of Learning Goin' On

This week has been another week full of hard work in Mrs. Johnson's room!

We began the week with a review of Fact and Opinion. A fact is a statement that is always true. Facts can be proven. An opinion is a statement of belief. Opinions are what someone may think or believe. Everyone may not agree. After a brief review, Mrs. Johnson prepared materials for French Fry Facts. We browsed magazines for statements of fact. We chose four facts to add to our French fries. Then, we put the fries in a bag. Order up!

French Fry Facts

Then, we were in for a treat! Mrs. Johnson passed out Mr. Potato Heads to all the groups. We just looked at her as if we were saying, "What in the world!?" She gave us four minutes to assemble our Potato Heads, and we introduced them as we went around.

Kenyada and Selicia work to put their Potato Head together.

Jendaya showing off her Mr. Potato Head

Mrs. Johnson connected our putting parts on Mr. Potato Head to putting parts onto words. Did you know that you can add parts to words? She was referring to prefixes and suffixes! She had our attention then! We reviewed the prefixes from third grade, and Mrs. Johnson added the new fourth grade prefixes. After we learned this new information, Mrs. Johnson passed everyone a word. We circled the prefix after finding the root word, and wrote the meaning of the new word based on the meaning of the prefix. This is such an easy way to figure out unfamiliar words!

The new prefix anti- means "against."

We also learned about finding the sequence of events in text. This is called sequential order. There are several words that give us clues about the sequence. And sometimes we have to look at the verb tense to figure out when an event happens. Mrs. Johnson gave us events from the first few pages of A Train to Somewhere. We put the events in order on a timeline using the clue words and verb tense. This activity served as quite the challenge for us! We got it though.

Arrion, Kenyada, Sherrina, and Nadia worked hard to order their events and put their timeline together.

Monique, Charles, Jendaya, and Nacolby worked hard!

We also had the challenge of summarizing text! At first, Mrs. Johnson gave each group movie boxes to read. She asked what our movies were about. Of course, we told her what we had read on the back of the movies. Mrs. Johnson pointed out that these are summaries of the movies. There are no details listed. We learned a super-easy way to summarize stories and information - using our hands!

There are five questions to ask when putting together a summary. One for each finger - Who? What? When? Where? and Why? Once you locate this information, all you have to do is put it together in a summary! Wow! To make sure we all understood what to do, she led us in putting a summary together as a class using our story.

Charles helped to write where the story took place.

After the explanation, we worked with a partner to find summaries in SPMS passages. Once we answered all the questions, we simply looked for the summary that best matched our information. Voila!

Arrion and De'Eric were thinking hard!

We couldn't possibly take pictures of all our activities this week! Instead, we'll just show you a picture of the work displayed in our hallway.

Once again...BUSY week in Mrs. Johnson's fourth grade class!