Weekly Update

Weekly Update

Important Reminders:

• Library tomorrow - please plan to return or renew your books
• Jump Rope for Heart is on Thursday, Feb. 14th, from 12:40-1:40.
• We will be celebrating Valentine's Day in our classroom on Thursday.  A letter was sent home last week, as well as emailed home, regarding our plans for the day.  
• 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:

• Feb. 10 - Jack's Birthday
• Feb. 11-15 - Leader of the Week = Noah
• Feb. 12 - Destiny's 1/2 Birthday
• Feb. 14 - Peyton's Birthday
• Feb. 14 - Jump Rope for Heart and Valentine's Day Party
• Feb. 18 - No School
• Feb. 22 - Mystery Reader
• Feb. 25-28 - Leader of the Week = Kate
• Feb. 26 - Mother and Son Dance at Concord
• March 1 - Mystery Reader

Check Out What We Are Learning This Week:

Writing:  

We will continue with Unit 3:Bringing History to Life.  The students completed their teacher-guided pieces on The American Revolution last week, and we will celebrate tomorrow.  This week the students will begin by selecting a Big Topic, and a focus topic that they would like to research and write an informational piece about.  This piece will be independent, using what they learned while writing The American Revolution pieces.  They will begin to research their "Big Topic", and then use that research to draft Ch. 1.  

Grammar:

This week we will be focusing on Complete and Incomplete thoughts (Dependent and Independent Clauses).  After the minilessons on these topics, the students will be using noredink.com for more practice and an assessment.  We began noredink.com last Friday, with practice and an assessment on capitalization.  

Reading:  

We will continue with Unit 3: Reading History: The American Revolution.  We have moved on from reading and learning about the American Revolution, and are now learning skills and strategies for any informational text.  We will be focusing on making inferences while reading non-fiction, summarizing non-fiction, and learning strategies for tackling complex texts.

Read Aloud:

We will continue reading another one of my favorites, Walk Two Moons, this week.   Walk Two Moons is a young adult novel by Sharon Creech, narrated in first person through Salamanca Tree Hiddle, better known as Sal. While traveling across the country to Idaho with her grandparents, she tells of her new best friend, Phoebe Winterbottom. Her own story unfolds at the same time.  In this book, the message "Don't judge a person until you have walked two moons in his moccasins" appears over and over.  We will discuss what this means in reference to each character, as well as to ourselves.  

Math:  

We will continue with Ch. 10: Fractions and Decimals on this week  In this chapter, the students will learn place value through tenths and hundredths, tenths, hundredths, decimals as fractions, adding decimals, comparing and ordering decimals, and they will learn how to solve problems with missing or too much information.   The Ch. 10 test will be Friday, Feb. 15th.  The study guide is on our Google Classroom.  

***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:  

ALL students will be testing over their current sorts on Friday, Feb. 15th.  They will receive their new sorts on Tuesday, Feb. 19th.

We will continue to have sight word tests, however they will be every other week so that the students are only taking one "spelling" test a week.  Our next sight word test will be on Friday, February 22nd.   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 the American Revolution again this week with Ch. 13: The American Revolution.  In this chapter, the students will learn about the battles, the results, and the effects of the war.  **This is the last Social Studies chapter for the quarter - we are moving on to Science!**

We will also continue watching some Liberty Kids videos as we follow along the timeline of this time period.  As I said in a prior email, the Liberty Kids videos are a fun way for the kids to watch and learn about these important historical events.  There are 4 fictional characters that are in the videos, taking place in all of these events, in order to tell the story.  The rest of the characters, and all of the information, is true.  They are VERY educational!

Have a GREAT Week!