It's hard to believe we've completed the first unit, (five selections) from our Reading Street series. Times quickly getting away from us. Just to make you aware in the future, after we complete each unit, we'll have one week to reteach skills that students did not grasp, and do mini-writing workshops with our students. This week we are concentrating on personal narrative writing. You child is working on a writing prompt about the first time they were a newcomer somewhere and how they coped in a difficult situation. We've also started what is called our CSI time each day where a designated time will be allotted to continue working with those children that need additional help with a skill or to help advance those students that need more challenging content. Things are going well. Students are getting excited about building their musical instruments. They've already started researching their instrument of choice. The due date will be September 30. A penalty of 10 points will be deducted per day for late projects. Students will also be given a science notebook grade for their work and reflections in relation to our Sound Unit in AMSTI. So far we've built background knowledge, studied chapter 14 in our textbook and tested on it. Students have assembled a dropping chamber in class; which is an activity dealing with the differentiation of sound and a telephone with cups, cord, and paperclips. We made a four way conference call today. Tomorrow we will be making an instrument called the string-bean. AMSTI is a fun educational way to learn concepts. It'a all hands-on, mind-on learning.
Don't forget about Grandparent's Day this Friday at 12:15 p.m. for those of you who did R.S.V.P. There has been a big turn out so far. I'd like to get pictures of students with their grandparents. If a grandparent intends to check out their grandchild, they must be on the list of people that are allowed to sign them out. Otherwise, students may not be checked out.
THIS WEEK'S PLANS
*FOURTH GRADE WILL NOT BE GIVING ANY READING, SPELLING, OR LANGUAGE TESTS THIS WEEK.
*Wed., Sept. 15- AL HISTORY VOCABULARY TEST (TAKEN FROM THE VOCABULARY WORDS FROM THEIR MAP SKILLS UNIT PACKET IN THEIR BINDERS)words like: geography, map key, cardinal directions, compass rose, etc...
*THURS., Sept. 16- **If math tests have been run off, we will be taking a data/graphing test that covers all of Chapter 4 in the math textbook: pictographs, bar graphs, line graphs, line plots, tally charts, data files, surveys, etc. . .
Your child should have approximately 30 minutes of homework daily. At least 15 minutes reading and documenting minutes read on their reading log sheet. Parents sign once a week. One sheet will last the whole nine weeks. Their reading logs will account for 10% of their reading grade. Also, you should be seeing a ring of math facts come home each night to work on memorizing their facts. They need to be able to answer a fact in 3 seconds to become automatic. I allow students to bring home any hardback textbook that they need to, if you so desire. The only one that is not hardback is the grammar book. I am thinking about scanning a page or two each week for additional practice and posting it to this blog if I'm allowed by copy-write laws. I'll check with Mrs. Nelson first.
Parents bare with the transition this first nine-weeks. Fourth grade is a big change from third just like fourth is from fifth. Like I've told most of my parents, from K-3rd the emphasis is teaching students to read. From fourth on, students are reading to learn and learning how to take notes on graphic organizers to help them study and organize their thoughts. It's an adjustment period. You might see a dip before they begin to soar, but I guarantee you'll see progress, and your child will be well equipped for fifth grade. Please excuse any type-os. It's late. I couldn't access this blog from school. There was a block. Hope this helps enlighten you to what's going on in our classroom.
Sincerely,
Theresa Wade
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