New Behavior System

After some talking with our 4th grade team and feeling like the students who are doing so well aren't recognized and praised enough for their great work I have decided to change our classroom behavior management a little.  Every day students will be self-grading their work (on a 10 point scale) where 10 points are best and 1 point is the worst for each class "period" we have.  The total day is worth 50 points.  If students earn less than 43 points, they will be losing their recess the following day and getting an email sent home to let you know about the behavior concerns for that day.  If students are earning more than 43 points, they will be earning bonus points for their table and will be working toward an extra reward.

I greatly appreciate the students who day in and day out are modelling excellence in our classroom and outside and really feel like they are not recognized enough.  So far, I'm super impressed with how much behavior has improved today and how everyone is really being honest with their self assessments.  Great job P4!

This week we are working on SO many new things!

Our new writing unit is "Writing Prompts" where we are focusing on being able to respond to a prompt on a deadline.  The downfall of writing workshop is that we work on one piece of writing for a month or more, so students don't have a great concept of time when working on these pieces.  To help prepare and become better able to work on a deadline, each week students will be given a writing prompt in class on Monday (or the start of the week, whichever is first) and their final draft will be due and scored on Friday.  This will help students get immediate feedback on their work, as well as showing what they have learned so far this year in practice.

In reading we are continuing to work on writing summaries for fiction writing, which is getting better, but we can always use a little more "tweaking" to perfect the craft.  Next week we will be starting chapter book groups where students will get to dive into learning and responding to a longer novel!

Ask your student which tribe we are researching for social studies.  If they can tell you the name of the tribe, write NP on their planner for bonus points tomorrow!  :)

Keep up the great work P4!