Field Trip to Nadahama Science Square

In Grade 4, we are inquiring into the concept of connections within ecosystems. 

Last week, we went on a field trip to Nadahama Science Square and afterward visited Oji Zoo. 

During this trip, we worked hard as researchers to observe living things in the environment and notice connections among them. 

We then recorded our findings and organised the data as food webs, focusing on the concept of connection. 

In the afternoon, we enjoyed seeing different animals at the zoo. 

We continued to wonder, "If these animals were living in the wild, what might be some possible connections in the ecosystem?"

Oh, what fun we had!

Reading in Grade 4

In Grade 4, we have been spending a lot of time reading. 

During DEAR (Drop Everything And Read) time, we read our independently chosen books every day!

As you can see from the chart above, just adding 10 minutes of reading time a day can have an amazing impact on our exposure to words and therefore our academic lives!

While we read, we try to notice and note these "signposts" below. 

When we notice these signposts, we stop reading and ask ourselves a key question to help us comprenend the text at a deep level. 

Our answers help us with many important skills as readers such as making connections, predicting and inferring, and thinking about the plot, theme, and conflict. 

Take Contrast & Contradiction as an example. 

When we are reading and a character says or does something that's opposite of what we would expect, we stop and ask "Why is the character acting this way?"

The answers could help us make a prediction or inference about the plot and/or conflict. 

We practice these skills not only during DEAR time but also during our daily read-alouds. 

In order to choose the book for our next read-aloud, we had a tournament of books!

Every day, we watched book trailors and read book reviews to help us make our choices between two books. 

Scar Island by Dan Gemeinhart was crowned as the 2018 Book of the Year with the runner-up being Crenshaw by Katherine Applegates!

These are all brand new books which have recently been purchased for the school library. Feel free to check them out yourself!

In addition to our daily read-alouds, we have also started having weekly book clubs. For our first book, we decided to read Jake Atlas and the Tomb of the Emerald Stone by Rob Lloyd Jones through a class vote. 

During the book clubs, we discuss the questions that we came up with ourselves. We make sure we always back up our opinions with textual evidence. 

Here is a book club in action from this week! Check out the lively discussion!

With all of this reading, we finally reached our goal of reading 250 books last week! 

We had an awesome party to celebrate our major accomplishment!

We then set our new goal to read 500 books by the end of the school year!

We are quickly becoming a community of readers as students from other classes and teachers are continuously joining this challenge. 

If you are interested to start your own reading chain, just come talk to any of the Grade 4 readers!