Our First Days of Fourth Grade

Our first few days of fourth grade have come to an end! Now, we are settled in and even more ready to get down to the business of learning - Mrs. Johnson style! Our first day of school began with a surprise! Mrs. Johnson chose to move up with us to fourth grade! We all smiled when we saw her. Some of us even argued that we were not in third grade anymore! But, Mrs. Johnson soon assured us that we were, indeed, in fourth grade. She will teach fourth grade this year. Whew! Thank goodness!

Mrs. Johnson must have spent a lot of time getting ready for our arrival, because her room was very inviting. As soon as we walked in, we knew we would have a great year!


She even had little "happies" for us to begin the new school year!


And, our books were nicely organized and ready to use!


Once we were all seated, Mrs. Johnson introduced herself by making us take a test! Yes, a test! It wasn't THAT kind of test, though. She gave us a test asking questions about her. We took our best guesses to answer them, and she went over the questions with us. We now know that her favorite restaurant is Bonsai...among other things!

After she introduced herself and told us about our new class, it was time for us to introduce ourselves to each other and to her. Mrs. Johnson doesn't do anything normal! She had a way to introduce ourselves so that we began learning as soon as possible! She's sneaky like that!

Mrs. Johnson read the Dr. Seuss book, Fox in Socks. She loves that book, and we thought it was funny too! Some of us even knew the words by memory and read along with her. In case you haven't read this book, it is a book full of tongue twisters. Mrs. Johnson's tongue twisted several times while she was reading. It was so funny! She would laugh at herself...and so did we!

Mrs. Johnson pointed out that some of the tongue twisters had words that all began with the same consonant sound. We learned that this literary device is called alliteration. She also pointed out some tongue twisters that all began with the same vowel sound. This literary device is called assonance. Now, here comes the best part! We all made a tongue twister using alliteration and assonance. We started with our name. We used our name and began all or most of our words with the same beginning sound as our name. It was hilarious! Arrion and Alero used assonance because most of their words began with vowel sounds like their names. The rest of us used alliteration because our names begin with a consonant sound.We all came up with an adjective, verb, and place that began with our consonant or vowel sound. Then, we put the words together in a tongue twister.

Nervous Nareuna naps in Nashville at noon.

Mean Monique marched at the mall on Monday.

Of course, Mrs. Johnson is always proud of her students' work, so she put it up as soon as we finished! Now, our door is super cute with our tongue twisters!

We really enjoyed learning names this way! Mrs. Johnson really enjoyed the fact that we learned something without even knowing it! I told you she was sneaky!

Now that introductions were out of the way, we began learning! In math, we studied place value all the way to the hundred thousands place! We wrote five- and six-digit numbers in standard form, expanded form, and word form. Of course, no learning is complete without hands-on fun! To assess our knowledge of place value, Mrs. Johnson planned a partner activity. We rolled number cubes to create a five- or six-digit number. Then, we worked together to write that number in standard form, expanded form, and word form. We all had a great time reviewing our lesson on place value.

Nareuna and Sabbion working quietly.

Brindarius and Jordan rolling for numbers.

Kristin and Arrion think this is fun!

Mrs. Johnson noticed that some of us still needed a little more practice, so the next day we continued our study of place value. After a lesson where WE actually WERE the lesson, we had an individual activity to assess what we know. Mrs. Johnson gave each group a deck of cards, and we all chose five or six numbered cards. Those would be our five- or six-digit numbers. Out of our hand, we created a number in standard form, expanded form, and word form.

James knows his place value!

Nadia is happy with her hand! She knows place value too!

This turned out to be a very nice display to show others what we have learned!

What's the Deal with Place Value?

In language this week, we started with the basics. We created a tree map with all the rules for capitalization. These rules served as a brief review from third grade. Then, Mrs. Johnson showed us a paragraph she wrote. She said she was so tired the night before that she did not use any capital letters. She said that since we made her so tired the day before, she would make us tired today...by asking US to correct her work! Not only that, but we also had to tell WHY we capitalized each thing. Man! I can already tell that we will be working hard this year!

Selicia made her corrections on Whiting Road, because she knows that all street names are capitalized.

We also reviewed complete sentences. We needed this because fourth grade focuses on more complex things like compound subjects, compound predicates, compound sentences, complex sentences, and independent and dependent clauses! Wow! That's a lot! So, simple sentences are vital to our learning! After our review lesson on sentences having both a subject AND a predicate, we completed a sort - "A Sentence or Not?".

Sherrina and De'Eric worked so well together.

Monique and James did a fabulous job as well!

We also started writing using an outline. Mrs. Johnson helped walk us through it, since most of us were a bit rusty in that area. Next week, we look forward to working on more.

In reading this week, we began our first story. A Visit with Grandpa was a story about Justin. Justin was angry with his mom and sister because he didn't want to help with the housework. He thought housework was "woman's work." You should have seen Mrs. Johnson's face when she read that! Justin's grandfather invited him to visit for a week. During that week, his grandfather taught him how to do many things, including housework! Justin soon realized that anyone could do housework. Throughout this story, we learned about using clues to figure out the setting. We also analyzed the main character, Justin, by using a Character Weave.

In vocabulary, we began a new vocabulary program: Wordly Wise. These words help with our expanded vocabulary. We learned how to use a dictionary, and we learned how to use the parts of a dictionary entry using our new words. Mrs. Johnson was able to see who studied when she graded our vocabulary quiz on Friday.

We also had a funeral service on Friday! Mrs. Johnson forgot to take pictures, but it was very sad! Mrs. Johnson brought up a tombstone as she hummed "The Funeral March." She told us, through her (fake) tears, that we had used some words "to death!" She said it was time to put these words to REST! She gave us an example: I felt bad after eating the undercooked meat. We use "bad" all the time, and it is so boring! So, we put "bad" to rest on our tombstone. We used our brand new thesauruses that Mrs. Johnson bought us to find replacement words for "bad." We created a banned word list with our new words. These are the words we will use in our writing from now on. Then, we worked in groups to find our own overused words, and we used our thesaurus to find new words to replace them. We have displayed our cemetary in our classroom. Feel free to come by and pay your respects.

You can see that we have had an incredibly busy week here in Mrs. Johnson's room! There is more, but I have run out of energy to write it all. Maybe I can tell you more soon! Keep checking in to see what Mrs. Johnson has in store for us next!