Finally finally finally: we are spending sufficient time on social studies. Social studies got lost in the shuffle quite a bit this year, and I can obviously take the blame for that. I'm still trying to navigate how to structure the afternoons so that I spend enough time on writing and enough time on social studies. Since we are a departmentalized fourth grade, I see each homeroom every other week. Last year, I tried splitting the afternoons so that when we came back from lunch, we did writing for about 40 minutes and then social studies for about 30 minutes. However, when it comes to writing, there is such a range in terms of the students' pace. For that reason, I often needed to cut into our social studies block for those students who required more time to write. So this year, I tried breaking the week up so that we had writing on the afternoons of Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and social studies on the afternoons of Tuesdays and Thursdays. Well, with half-days, assemblies, snow days, etc., at least one afternoon per week often got affected in some way, and because I have certain writing standards I'm required to teach students, writing often took priority. Alas, social studies got the short end of the stick yet again. But at this point in the school year, since we've covered the majority of the 4th grade standards in reading and writing, I'm trying to incorporate our road trip project any chance we get.

In our persuasive writing unit, I introduced students to our next writing assignment: a school editorial. They chose topics that related to school, and came up with a claim based on their topic. For example, one student's claim is that a half hour is an insufficient amount of time for lunch and recess, while another student's claim is that the school would benefit from having a newspaper club. We'll take this writing step-by-step through the writing process, and the eventual goal is to support our claim in a five-paragraph essay. On Friday during our theme unit, students worked in groups to determine the critical moment(s) and what the character learned in their assigned picture book. These led them to the theme of the story. Each group had to present their book and theme to the class. I really do love hearing the kids talk about lessons from texts that they can apply to their own lives.

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Laura and Nathan. Laura wrote me the sweetest card for Teacher Appreciation Week. She has a heart of gold, and she shines during our reading discussions on theme. Nathan also has a giant heart. He pretty much makes me smile whenever I see him. He is witty and his enthusiasm for Disney songs rivals my own. :)