Welcome to Fourth Grade!  

I am very excited for this school year. Fourth grade is a lot of fun and a lot of work. This is the grade where students reading to learn. I am always here to help.  

Our classroom is a Responsive Classroom. Your child may have come home talking about morning message, morning meeting, CARES, greetings and games. “The Responsive Classroom is an approach to teaching and learning that fosters safe, challenging, and joyful elementary classrooms and schools.” The Responsive Classroom approach involves seven important guidelines:

1.     The social curriculum is as important as the academic curriculum

2.     How children learn is as important as what children learn.

3.     The greatest cognitive growth occurs through social interaction.

4.     There is a set of social skills that children need to learn and practice in order to be successful. They form the acronym CARES – cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy, and self-control.

5.     We must know our children individually, culturally, and developmentally.

6.     Knowing the families of the children we teach is as important as knowing the children.

7.     Teachers and administrators must model the social and academic skills that they wish to see in each of their students. (Northeast Foundation of Children, Inc.)

Download the 2011 "Walking with my Iguana" movie by clicking this link and saving the file. You may need QuickTime Player to view this movie, download it for free here.