If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others: read a lot and write a lot

– Stephen King

Today our class worked with Mr. DeBerry, the Scarsdale ELA helping teacher, on turning the small moments in their lives into realistic fiction stories. They identified these "seeds" and thought about "adding a twist"; finding ways to imagine "what if...". What if my adventure happened this way? What if I had the chance to change the characters or ending?

Good writers play with writing, and words, and language. They imagine one way of sharing their story, and then revise it to make it even better. Realistic fiction writing is an opportunity for students to practice everything they know about good narrative writing and transform it into another genre of writing. They are living their lives as writers -- taking a moment in time and imagining a new version.

 

Welcome to the Fourth Grade!

Welcome to the Fourth Grade!

Dear Fourth Grader,

I am so excited to be welcoming you to Fourth Grade! Tuesday, September 6th will be the start of a great new academic and social experience. We are going to have a fantastic year together!

I have spent the summer thinking about and putting together great projects, ideas, and units that we will spend the year exploring. So, to get your minds ready for this year, spend some time over these next few weeks thinking about how we can help make Fourth Grade a great year for you. What will your goals be? How can we work together to achieve them? These are some year-long conversations that we will begin as soon as you arrive in September. Don’t worry about not having answers to these questions right away! Our learning experiences and reflections will be our guides to an exciting and enriching year. Every new day or experience will be an opportunity to add something special to our class. While you are waiting for the first day of school to roll around, I hope that you are reading and practicing your addition, subtraction, division and multiplication facts!

On the first day of school please bring in a few books (2) that you read this summer.  Also, please bring three current pictures of yourself. 

I can’t wait for our first day together! 

These are the school supplies you will need if you haven’t ordered a PTA supply box:

• Five marble composition books
• Ten glue sticks
• One box of colored pencils
• One box of twistable crayons (crayons in a hard, twistable sleeve)
• 50 pencils
• 1 pink eraser
• One box of tissues
• Two yellow highlighters
• Two packages of 3”x3” lined post-its
• One blue two-pocket folder
• 1 package of thin markers
• 1 package of thick markers

Love,  

Mrs. Robert