Wooooweeee what a week. I was out the day and a half before Thanksgiving because I had a stomach bug (awesome timing), and then Mrs. O'Keefe was out for a few days post Thanksgiving break. So several different substitute teachers combined with the kids coming back from a four-day celebratory weekend? You can imagine the insanity. But we survived! After an honest discussion on Wednesday morning regarding our behavior with substitutes and expectations using Chromebooks, we managed to turn things around and have a better second half of the week. Every year around this time, I tend to see a shift in behavior. I'm sure it has something to do with the weather and time change that comes with the change of seasons, as well as excitement and restlessness around the holidays. Throw in the fact that the "newness" of fourth grade has officially worn off and the school work is getting increasingly challenging, and you'll find yourself with the ultimate recipe for misbehavior. But continually reflecting on classroom conduct and problem-solving together can help us get in front of this trend. And THAT would be the ideal holiday gift for us teachers!

We kicked off our nonfiction unit this week. We discussed how the author's purpose when writing nonfiction differs from when authors write fiction. Nonfiction is primarily written to inform, explain, or persuade, whereas fiction is written to entertain. Fiction texts are stories with a beginning, middle, and end, and are read for enjoyment. That's not saying nonfiction is boring; it's saying that people tend to read nonfiction with the intention of learning something. They may learn facts about a topic, learn how to do something, or learn two sides of an argument. That being said, the author's purpose of a text isn't always cut and dry; you'll find overlaps. For example, a persuasive speech may include figures and statistics, or an autobiography might include important events in history that fascinate and entertain the reader. Yet when we talk about the author's purpose of a text, and how we can use that to help us determine the genre, we have to focus on the primary motive for writing. What is it that the author wants the reader to first and foremost take away from his/her work? We'll continue to explore author's purpose, especially as we build our own writing skills, and it's important that students consider the author's purpose when identifying whether a text is fiction or nonfiction.

This year, we're in "Spellography Training". I've been working with our resource room teachers Ms. Fudge and Ms. Jareo to implement daily spelling instruction using a comprehensive word-study program. This program teaches into prevalent spelling concepts, parts of speech, word origins, and vocabulary, and we've been spending about a week and a half per set of words. We always do a pretest and posttest for the words, and it's great when the kids see a jump in their posttest score. I love when they're proud of themselves, and we were all proud of the recent success James has had in spelling!

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Cecilia and Max. Cecilia works incredibly hard on her Quick Writes. I truly admire the effort she continually puts into her classwork, and it's wonderful to witness her grow as a learner this year. Speaking of growth, Max's participation this week was off the charts. What a difference a few months makes! He is now regularly putting himself out there and raising his hand, and my hope is that we can build his confidence at school so much so that it competes with his confidence on the baseball field!