Weekly Update: Dec. 3-7

Weekly Update

Important Reminders:

• We have Library tomorrow - please plan to return or renew your books
• World Holiday Celebrations will be Wednesday, Dec. 5th.  We are excited to learn about all of the different holidays celebrated by our friends at Concord.
• The Cardinal's assembly will be on Friday, Dec. 7th.  We are working hard to fill our hallways with LOTS of Cardinals stuff!
• 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:

• Dec. 3-7 = Leader of the Week - Destiny
• Dec. 4 - Alen's Birthday
• Dec. 5 - Early Release and Buddies
• Dec. 5 - World Holiday Celebration
• Dec. 5 - Garden Glow - Lindbergh Night at the Botanical Gardens
• Dec. 7 - Mystery Reader
• Dec. 10-14 = Leader of the Week - Hunter
• Dec. 20 - Winter Parties
• Dec. 21 - End of the Second Quarter
• Dec. 21 - Half Day of School
• Dec. 22 - Jan. 2 - Winter Break
• Dec. 27 - Concord Family Bowling at 2:00
• Jan. 3 - School resumes

Check Out What We Are Learning This Week:
Writing:  
We are continuing Unit 2: Personal and Persuasive Essays.  We completed our personal opinion essays, and are moving on to writing persuasive essays.  We are going to tie this writing piece to our PBL Question: How can we educate others about the importance of understanding extreme weather.  We will develop our thesis question and reasons together as a class.  We will use the notes we have been taking about hurricanes during our reading time to help support the reasons with evidence.   We will begin to draft our persuasive piece this week.  

Reading:  

We are continuing Unit 2: Reading Informational Books.  We will be focusing on comparing non-fiction texts, and finding the main idea an details of different non-fiction texts.

Read Aloud:

We finished Out of My Mind last Friday.  I think everyone LOVED the book, and the message the author wanted us to learn.  I will begin the book The Wild Robot.  This book is about a robot named Roz who opens her eyes for the first time, and she discovers that she is alone on a remote, wild island. She has no idea how she got there or what her purpose is--but she knows she needs to survive. After battling a violent storm and escaping a vicious bear attack, she realizes that her only hope for survival is to adapt to her surroundings and learn from the island's unwelcoming animal inhabitants.  As Roz slowly befriends the animals, the island starts to feel like home--until, one day, the robot's mysterious past comes back to haunt her.  This book is from bestselling and award-winning author and illustrator Peter Brown. 

Math:  

We will begin Ch. 7: Patterns and Sequences.  In this chapter we will learn nonnumeric and numeric patterns, sequences, addition and subtraction rules with input/output tables, multiplication and division rules with input/output tables, order of operations, equations with two operations, and equations with multiple operations.  We are currently planning to take the test on Wed., Dec. 19.

***Knowing your multiplication facts is extremely important as we move forward in math, so keep practicing those facts!  We will continue to practice multi-digit multiplication and long division.

***In order for students to show mastery with a standard, they will be doing "Check-ins" throughout the year to show that they didn't just memorize the skills for the test, but that they retained the skills, thus showing mastery.  My goal with the check-ins is to make sure that the 4th grade Math Standards are mastered by all students by the end of the year! ***

Spelling:  

We will begin learning the patterns of the words for our next spelling sort in our units.  We will also take our next Sight Word test on Friday, Dec. 7th.  Remember these are the words that do not follow a pattern, and need to be memorized.  Students will need to not only spell the words correctly, but be able to read them in order to "pass" this group of words.

Social Studies:

 We will continue with Ch. 4 this week.  We will continue to read and learn about the different important explorers.  Each group is learning all that they can about one explorer.  They are putting what they have learned onto a slide that will be part of a presentation.  Once everyone has finished, we will present the entire slide show to the class, and each group will teach the rest of the class about their explorer.  We will also begin Ch. 6: Early English Settlements.  We will learn about Roanoke and Jamestown this week.  

Have a GREAT Week!