Exciting things are always happening in the Fourth Grade classrooms at Ruskin School!

During our LANGUAGE ARTS periods, we are working in whole groups and small groups on our reading skills and other language skills. Moreover, students are reading more non-fiction as well as advanced chapter books as we work our way to reading novels independently. We're also writing multi-paragraph essays, opinions, and responses to books and stories we've read.

In HISTORY, it's ALL about California as we study California's indigneous peoples, California's missions, and the very exciting and significant period in California's history, the Gold Rush.

During our MATH periods, we solidify our skills with the four operations, learn about fractions and their decimal equivalents, solve problems with proper units of measurement, and expand our geometric knowledge of lines, shapes, and angles.

If we're not in the SCIENCE LAB doing hands-on activities, we're reading and learning about earthquakes, volcanoes, magnetism, electricity, habitats, adaptation, and waves.

Since we're big kids now, we go to PE class twice a week and have the opportunity to attend MUSIC as an elective class, also twice a week.

We visit the LIBRARY every other week to check out books to take home and bring them back when we're done reading them.

How could we forget about FIELD TRIPS?!? Though they can vary from year to year and classroom to classroom, we have visited places to learn about science (i.e., 49ers EDU/Levi's Stadium, Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge); history (i.e., History Park of San Jose, Mission San Juan Bautista or Santa Clara); culture (i.e., San Jose Taiko, Chinese Martial Arts); and the arts (i.e., Nutcracker Ballet, Silicon Valley Symphony). And if we can't GO there, we sometimes try to BRING them to us like speakers and performers!

 

We continue to learn new things, practice and refine old ones we've learned, find different ways to solve problems, attain goals, and surpass expectations! We are always very busy in the Fourth Grade!