Weekly Update: Aug. 20-24

Weekly Update

Important Reminders:

• 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!

• I will be using Class Dojo this year as a management and reward system for our classroom.  A note will be coming home Monday with info on how to login as a parent so you can view your child's Dojo account.  

• A Leader of the Week letter will also be coming home on Monday with your child's Leader of the Week date.  I will also send home a reminder letter the week before your child is to be the Leader

• Weekly Reading Logs will start the week of Aug. 28th.
• I will also be sending home login information for Prodigy and SeeSaw.  Prodigy is a Math program/game that we will be using in stations this year, and can be used at home.  SeeSaw is an online tool that we will be using throughout the year as well.

• Please send a snack with your child that is NUT FREE every day, as we do not eat lunch until 12:40.  Thanks!

Check Out What We Are Learning This Week:

Writing:  
We are working on building our writing community, and coming up with some ideas for our writing.  On Wednesday, we will begin our first Writing Unit- Realistic Fiction.  In this unit we are really focusing on creating and developing stories and characters that feel real.  The first few days of this unit we will begin doing this by learning how fiction writer's get ideas for their stories from small moments in their lives, as well as imagining books that they wish existed in the world, and issues that they have in their lives. 

Reading:  
Our first Reading Unit is - Interpreting Characters.  Our read aloud for this unit is The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo.    We will spend the first few days of this unit establishing a reading life.  We will be reading intensely, taking responsibility for reading with-in reach books, and working together to create procedures and routines for finding books.  We will also be building our stamina as a reader.  The students should be able to read 45 minutes independently at this age, and we will spend this week working up to that time. 

Math:  
We will begin our week discussing Stations and how stations should look, sound, feel, and what to do if you have questions during your station time.  We will also be taking the pre-assessment on ALEKS so that the students are able to begin working on their ALEKS PIE as soon as possible.  We will be using ALEKS as one of our stations.  We will begin Ch. 1- Place Value on Wednesday.  In Fourth Grade students need to know Place Value up to the Millions Period.  We will review the vocabulary words Digit, Standard Form, Expanded Form, Word Form, and Period.  The students will be able to read and write numbers to the Millions Place.  They will need to be able to write the number to the millions place in standard form and expanded form.  I will send home Vocab Cards for this chapter on Wednesday.  Please keep them some place safe so you can use them to help prepare for the chapter test. 

Spelling:  
This week the students will take the beginning of the year Inventory test.  I will use this test to determine the level/sort your child will be on.  We will use our spelling time to practice our spelling words, as well as to do Grammar lessons. 

Social Studies:  
We will alternate Social Studies and Science.  We are starting the year with Social Studies.  We will be learning the geography of the United States.  We will discover how to read a globe to find places on Earth, learn about different landmasses and bodies of water found on Earth, and explore the political and physical geogrpahy, climate, and vegetation of the United States.  In this chapter, we will be making a Salt Map of the United States.  Be on the lookout for a note coming home regarding the Salt Maps.  

Have a great week!