Weekly Update: Oct. 15-19

Weekly Update

Important Reminders:

• We have library on Monday, so please remember to bring your books to return or renew.
• Friday, Oct. 19, is the end of the first quarter.  It is also a half day of school.
• PLEASE practice multiplication facts!  The students need to really know them quickly, and without having to use strategies to solve them.  We will be starting multi-digit multiplication and long division soon, and having those multiplication facts memorized will be a HUGE help!  On Google Classroom (just log in with your child's username and password, then save that to your computer, and you will then have access whenever) I put some multiplication websites and game directions under the "classwork" tab and then under the "Websites" topic.  Thanks for your help with practicing these facts!

• Please remember to check, and initial, your child's planner every night.  Homework and important notes are written in the planner daily.  Thanks for your help with this!
• Please send a snack with your child that is NUT FREE every day, as we do not eat lunch until 12:10.  Thanks!

Important Dates to Remember:

• Oct. 15-19 - Leader of the Week = Caroline
• Oct. 19 - End of First Quarter
• Oct. 19 - Half Day of School (Dismissal is 11:40), Buddies, and Ability Awareness activity.
• Oct. 19 - I will be taking a personal day to go out of town for my daughter's soccer tournament.  
• Oct. 22 - Rose's Birthday
• Oct. 22-26 - Leader of the Week = Alen
• Oct. 26 - No School 
• Oct. 27 - Noah's Birthday
• Oct. 29- Nov. 2 - Leader of the Week = Alex
• Oct. 31 - Fall Festival (includes the Pumpkin Run, Class Parties, and more..)

Check Out What We Are Learning This Week:

Writing:  
We will begin Unit 2: Personal and Persuasive Essays this week.  In this unit, the students will learn that writer's use an essay frame to help structure their writing  The students will learn how to write a thesis statement with three reasons.  Each reason will have three examples to support the thesis statement.  (I will post a picture this week of the anchor chart that shows the essay structure to Google Classroom.)  We will also explore several strategies for growing insightful ideas including important people, places, and objects as inspiration.  

Reading:  

We will continue our next Reading Unit: Reading Informational Books this week.  We reviewed text features last week, and will be finishing up our "Text Features About Me" project.  This week we will begin our focus on the different Text Structures in informational texts.  The students will learn what each of the text structures are, the importance of them, and how to identify them in a text.   The text structures are - Description, Sequence, Compare and Contrast, Problem and Solution, and Cause and Effect.  We will use lots of different texts as we learn these structures, especially texts on weather.  We will be doing a PBL unit on extreme weather to tie in our reading, writing, and math curriculum, as well as current events.  More info to come on this PBL.  

Read Aloud:

We are still finishing Deep and Dark and Dangerous by Mary Downing Hahn.  We are loving this book!  We are identifying some clues the author leaves for us as we read, and some are even making predictions about the "mystery" in the book.  They never want me to stop reading when it is time!  We can't wait to finish this book and solve the "mystery" of the unknown character that we now know is "Theresa."  Hopefully we can finish this week.

Math:  
We are continuing to work through Ch. 4: Multiply with One Digit Numbers.  This week the students will learn the Distributive Property, more multiplication with regrouping, and how to multiply by a multi-digit number without regrouping.  We will also spend some time on problem solving.  Our test is scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 24th.  The study guide is on our Google Classroom.  

Spelling:  
I sent an email home on Friday, Oct. 12, regarding the changes to our spelling for the year.  I also attached a list of 4th grade Sight Words that the students need to memorize if they do not already know them.  A sight word test will given every Friday over a group of words.  The first test will be this Thursday (since Friday is a half day) over the words in group 1.  The words will be on Spelling City by tonight.  Look for "4th Grade Sight Words - Group 1" if you would like your child to practice these words using different activities or games.  Each group will be on Spelling City.  

This week we are going to practice some new spelling routines and activities with a list of Nouns, Verbs, and Adjectives.  There will NOT be a test over these words.  Next week, I will send home the next sort for your child.  Again, these words are not to be memorized.  You can practice different sorting activities at home in order to learn the patterns of the words.  Our focus is learning the patterns, not memorizing.  Tests will be at the end of each unit, and groups will test on different days.  I will make sure you are aware of your child's test date as soon as they are given the last sort of the unit.  Again, all of this information and more was given in the letter I sent home Friday.  

Science:

 We will continue to work on our first Science unit: Energy Conversions this week.  In the second chapter of this unit we will investigate why devices in Ergstown output, or fail to output, energy.  We will explore energy converters, energy past and present, energy in the system, and design arguments about devices.  This is a quick chapter, with lots of hands-on exploration.  Ask your kiddos about the systems they explored and learned about last week.  I think they enjoyed being given the parts to a system, and they had to figure out how to make the system function - no directions or modeling.  It was fun to sit back and watch their thinking.  We had GREAT discussions afterwards.  

Red Ribbon Week Information:

Have a great week!