4th Grade Spanish Immersion with Maestra Damsteegt

Happy unexpected SHORT week! I hope everyone enjoyed this time off and stayed warm while enduring the icy weather outside. This should be a short blog since we only had a few days of learning this week!  What We Learned this Week: Bible : This week, we talked about God's covenant with David. I think it would be beautiful if the family read and pondered over Psalm 24. It is a psalm that praises God and thanks Him for all that He has done. God's will is good and perfect. Math : We are diving deep into math word problems. The students are learning how to draw comparison bar models in order to help them visualize what kind of problem they must set up in order to solve.  Reading : In reading class, we are learning how to pay attention to the lives of the characters we are reading about in order to formulate a life lesson to be learned. We can do this in our very own lives too. Writing : This week, we started to slowly and carefully plan out our chapters for our informational narrat...

 Happy Snow Day! I hope everyone got to enjoy this fun Friday snow day! What We Learned this Week: Bible:  This week, we studied the movement of the ark to the City of David and the importance of listening to God's instruction. The students had a hard time understanding Uzzah's punishment of death after touching the ark to prevent it from falling, but we concluded that sometimes we as humans simply cannot comprehend Him. But, what we do know is that we must submit to Him and follow His instructions. We also read about David wanting to construct a better and nicer place of dwelling for the ark of the covenant. David felt bad he lived in a palace while the ark dwelled in a tent. However, God made it clear to David that He did not wish for this change. Never before had He made it clear to His people that he wanted a place other than the tent to house the ark. We learned that we must trust in God's will.   Math:  We are doing such a wonderful job learning about the ...

What We Learned this Week: Bible:  We read the story of how David became King of Israel according to 2 Samuel chapter 5. We look forward to studying more of 2 Samuel.  Math:  We have started a brand-new unit this week! The students were introduced to the basics of algebra which included simplifying expressions, solving for an unknown part of an equation, and solving an equation given a value.  Reading:  This week, we learned about the importance of using vocabulary words that pertain to the topic that we are reading about in informational texts. It helps us to better be able to teach the individuals we are wishing to share our knowledge with. We also learned about three different types of text this week- narrative information text, hybrid text, and informational text. We ended the week by starting to read our own narrative information books. The students picked out the books that interested them the most from the library, and then they started reading them. The ...

What We Learned this Week: Bible:  We have finished up our unit on Saul and David. The students took their test, and we will be starting our David unit next week. Math:  The students have finished our unit on division! Nice work! The students are encouraged to continue practicing their basic multiplication and division facts at home. They are the foundations for all future math classes.  Reading:  This week, we talked about how good informational text readers take their time to understand cause and effect relationships and problem-solution relationships while reading. We also discussed strategies good readers use when they encounter unknown words in the text.  Writing:  We have started our new writing unit! We took time this week to examine personal nonfiction text- what it is, their characteristics, etc. We are gathering our knowledge together in order to prepare ourselves to think of our own ideas for our own personal nonfiction text essays.  Social ...

  What We Learned this Week: Bible:  This week, we talked about David's stay in Philistia as he hid from King Saul. We held a nice discussion about how God was at work in David's life while he lived amongst his enemies. Another question we discussed during class might be a nice topic amongst the family this weekend: "When have you seen God offering up His protection in your own life?" Math:  The students took their knowledge of long division and applied it to learning how to perform long division with a two-digit divisor. They are becoming quite the experts at long division. I am impressed. Reading:  This week, we have been focusing on and taking note on the ways that informational text has its information organized- in a descriptive manner, in a chronological manner, and in a comparing manner.  Writing:  The students have completed their persuasive essays! We celebrated this wonderful occasion by meeting up with the other 4th grade students. They broke off...