This week in ELA we took our unit test for nonfiction, which is taken by every fourth grader in our school district. The test doesn't signal the end of our unit; but rather it allows us to identify the specific areas of the unit that need to be retaught or focused on. I'll be honest, this is not an easy test. There is a lot of writing involved, including a text-based writing, and we haven't had too much practice with developing strong responses to text-based questions. Yet despite the rigor of this assessment, not one student gave up or stopped trying, which is incredibly commendable. After going over the questions and noticeable trends as a class, we reflected on the test and unit. With this input and the test results, a few trouble areas stood out, specifically around truly understanding a text-based question in order to form a clear central idea in response. So that's going to be a major concentration over the next week!


In writing, we focused our time over the last two weeks on the revising and editing stages of the writing process. We had lessons around adding purposeful dialogue into our narratives and splitting our writing into paragraphs. Students also typed up their narratives and worked on a neat interactive social studies assignment using Google Slides and Google Maps.

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Annabel C. and Miqueias. Annabel is on a Bucket Filler streak-- this is her second week in a row! She really filled my bucket after school on Monday when I noticed she'd left me a note in my classroom mailbox. It was a simple sentence or two, but its thoughtful, supportive message meant a lot to me. Miqueias put forth so much effort on his nonfiction test, and Ms. Fudge and I were both impressed and proud. His hard work paid off and he did great, and I love seeing him continually blossom as a student this year.