Page 5 - SN February - Grade 4

EAL

MS. DIVNA STAKIC

Intermediate Group

Dear Parents,
In January we continued supporting the PYP trans-disciplinary theme - How the World
Works – Natural Phenomena, with its central idea: The Earth is affected by natural phenom-
ena that results in changes to the environment. We inquired into the natural world and its
laws; the interaction between the natural world (physical and biological) and human societies.
EAL students watched and discussed various video clips about natural disasters caused by
tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, volcanic eruptions, etc., and used adequate vocabulary and sen-
tence structure to describe what they saw. We continued our focus on further developing
reading fluency, vocabulary and comprehension, as we read different non-fiction articles
about natural disasters from a book series titled: True Stories. We read and analyzed articles
about what causes, and what happens during an earthquake, volcanic eruption, lightening,
flood, avalanche, etc. The students are now fluent readers, and we focused on reading with
expression. We also analyzed each non-fiction text to enable deeper understanding of the
central idea We practiced finding the main idea in a paragraph, paraphrasing and summariz-
ing skills. Special focus was on developing note-taking skills, as we supported the Cornell
note-taking system, introduced in their homeroom. The inquiry led us to find out more about
Pompeii, and Vesuvius eruption in 79 AD. We watched segments of a BBC documentary,
and practiced listening and note-taking skills. The information we collected was used as we
practiced the First Steps writing genre – writing to recount.