Multiplication Combinations

One of our big fourth grade goals is learning all of our multiplication combinations up to 12 x12 so well that we know them in a snap.

There are lots of different ways you can study your facts so you can memorize them.

• Play Multiplication War with a friend. Deal out half of a deck of face cards (1 through 10 or 1 through 12) to each player. Both players put down two cards (the factors). Multiply the two cards together to get your product. The player with the higher product captures both cards! The winner is the player who captures all the cards!
• Play Dice War with a friend. Each player gets two dice. At the same time, roll your two dice. Multiply the two numbers on your dice together. The player with the higher product gets a point. The first player to 20 points wins! To switch up the game, have the player with the lower product win!
• Play games online to learn your multiplication combinations. Here's one game online from the BBC. You can choose the multiplication combinations you want to be quizzed on.  
• Have someone quiz you with flash cards! Set a timer each time you are quizzed. See if you can beat your time each time you are quizzed!
• Figure out which facts are the trickiest for you to learn. Place the facts on doors around your house. Before you enter the door, say the fact and the product out loud! You have to get the product correct to enter the room!

How do you study your facts? Leave your ideas here!

Personal Narrative Revision Strategies

We had so many different ideas for strategies we could use to revise our personal narratives. Here are some of them:

• Find the heart of your piece (the most important part). Stretch the heart of your piece, showing everything that happened at that time. 
• Look for times you are just telling your emotions (ex. I was angry). SHOW how you felt instead (ex. I clenched my fists. My heart beat hard against my chest. I glared daggers at him.). 
• Look for times you are just telling what happened in your piece (ex. It took a long time to get to the mall.)  SHOW what is happening instead. 
• Revise your piece to make sure each scene includes a variety of details and not just one type of detail (dialogue, internal thoughts, small actions, and setting details).
• Revise to include the internal and the external stories! Tell about where times you character ran, jumped and played, but also tell about times your character wished, hoped, thought, yearned and desired.
• Write a stronger lead to your piece, trying out a few different versions until you find the one that works.

You can also look at our Writing Rubric under the "Writing" tab to get more ideas for how to revise your piece. As you revise, remember that revision is about making MAJOR changes that improve your piece, not about editing for capitalization, punctuation, spelling or paragraphing.   
Do you know another revision strategy? Add it here in the comments!

Exciting Deliveries!

We were so excited this afternoon because two packages arrived for our class during lunch time. They were filled with books purchased by all of you from our Amazon.com Class Wish List.

Here are our new books! Click on the photo to enlarge it!

Out of all the new books we received, which do you want to read first? Why?

200 Book Challenge Update!

We're only one week into our 200 Book Challenge, but we've already read 59 books as a class!

Out of all the books you've read so far this year, which do you most recommend? Why? Leave your thoughts in the comments so other readers can get ideas for great books to read!

200 Book Challenge!

We officially kicked off our 200 book challenge yesterday! As a class, we set a goal of reading 200 books. Each book we read will be logged in the front of our reading log. Once we hit 200 books, we'll celebrate with a Reading Marathon! We'll wear our pajamas to school, eat breakfast in the classroom and enjoy 90 minutes straight of reading! We can't wait!

Each Friday we'll count the books we've read and watch as we get closer to our goal.

Using What We Know to Create Narrative Notebook Entries

Today we began collecting notebook entries for our personal narrative writing unit. We started by charting all the strategies we've learned for generating notebook entries over our school career!

Click on the chart to see it larger!

Can you believe all the different strategies we already know as writers? We will get to choose from these strategies, any other strategies we know, and all the new strategies we learn as we write our notebook entries this year!

Do you know any other strategies? Leave them in the comments!

Welcome to Our Classroom!

Tomorrow brings the first day of fourth grade! Our classroom is all ready, but it's missing the most important part--all of you! Here are some pictures of what our classroom looked like Wednesday night before anyone arrived. If you want to see a larger version of a picture, just click on it!

Here's our schedule for the first day of school.

Look for this sign Thursday morning in the yard--I'll be carrying it!

 

 

Here's part of our library.

These are the letters you wrote at the end of third grade. They taught me so much about you!

Here's another part of our library!

This year, we'll each have our own jobs and responsibilities in the classroom.

These boards will be filled up with your work!

This is the door you'll enter tomorrow morning!