This Week 10/19/15

Hello Fourth Grade Families!

A big 'Happy Birthday' to Ava!  Ava is such a blessing in our classroom...she is a hard worker, not only with her academics, but when helping keep our classroom neat and organized as well.  At various times this year Ava has erased the whiteboard, swept the floor, cleaned the desks, organized her classmates' desks, straightened up our bookshelves, and even brought a garbage bag out to recess to pick up the playground!  She also loves to help out with Safety Patrol in the afternoons.  She is a wonderful helper and a great example to her classmates, and her sweet little sister, Aubrey, who's in Kindergarten.  We love you Ava!!!

I hope you'll all be able to join us for the Fall Festival on Thursday night!  We've got our door decorated for 'Trick or Treat', and I'm working on putting my costume together :)  I can't wait to see the kids all dressed up in their costumes!  If you're able to donate candy, please drop it off at the front desk...we could also use your help in other areas, so check out the Sign Up Genius that Mrs. Verdi sent out.

This Week In...

Math:  We're starting our Multiplication Unit this week.  Some of the kids are already well versed in their multiplication facts, and this will be a review for them.  Others are still working on learning their facts.

We're continuing to work on our Math Fact Fluency daily.  We've started setting a goal for how many facts we can get right in 3 minutes at the beginning of the week.  We went to see if we can reach it by the end of the week.  Some kids set their goal on Monday, and reached it on Tuesday!  So I told them to reset it a little higher...we're gonna keep on challenging ourselves!!!

Most of the kids did really well on their Unit 2 assessments!  I'm planning to send homework once a week that continues to focus on adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers.  It's so easy to make small addition, subtraction, or regrouping mistakes, so it will benefit the kids to continue practicing this skill.

Reading:  We're continuing our 'Asking Questions' unit.  We'll be learning about types of questions, asking questions as we read, noticing when our questions get answered, and reading with a question in mind.  All of these strategies will help the kids understand what they read more deeply, and will extend their learning.

We're still enjoying our read aloud, A Snicker of Magic, and the kids are making tons of inferences about what's going on in the story.  Ask them what they found out about who Felicity's related to...that should get them talking!

Writing:  This week we're going to be doing some activities that will help us become better at making our writing descriptive.  We'll also work on 'showing, not telling' when we write.

Language:  We're working on Subjects and Predicates this week.  We'll learn the differences between the simple subject and simple predicate, and the complete subject and complete predicate.

Bible:  This week we're learning about the continued persecution of Christians by the Jewish leaders.  Our memory verse is:  My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. 2 Corinthians 12:9

Thank you for sharing your kids with me...I truly enjoy our time together every day!!!  I'm looking forward to seeing you next week for Parent-Teacher conferences :)

This Week...10/12/15

Hello!

The weeks are already flying by!  I can't believe it's already October...at the end of this month we'll have our Parent-Teacher conferences.  I'll be sending out an email this week with a sign-up link.

I wanted to share some pictures from our field trip to Schiele Museum, but I'm having trouble getting my computer to upload the pictures :(  Once I get it working, I'll put some pictures on the blog.  Unfortunately, we couldn't visit the Catawba Indian Village because of the rain, but we still had a great time!  We spent some time talking about the tribes who were native to North Carolina, and learning about other tribes around the United States.  The kids also met the archaeologist who works for the museum and got to put together some pieces of pottery, just like they would in their lab.  Not to mention, we had an epic astronaut vs. alien war in the Space exhibit!

This Week...

Math:  We'll be focusing on subtracting large numbers, especially subtracting across zeros and regrouping (ie. 6700 - 4265).  By the end of the week we should be ready to take our Unit 2 test, which will focus on the following skills:

• Using mental math to add and subtract
• Estimating sums and differences of whole numbers
• Adding whole numbers into the thousands
• Subtracting whole numbers into the thousands
• Subtracting across zeros

My plan is to review on Wednesday and take the assessment on Thursday.

Reading:  Last week the kids formed guided reading groups and chose their first books!  They've been spending some time reading them every day, and responding to what they've read in a journal.  They've been doing some buddy reading, round robin reading, and reading on their own, and seem to be enjoying their books and their groups!

This week we'll begin our 'Asking Questions' unit, and will talk about how our questions help us understand what we read even better.  We'll learn about how some questions have answers that are right there in the book, and others have answers that we need to think about.  We'll also generate some questions for our classmates to answer based on Bloom's Taxonomy (levels of learning).

We're having a blast with our read aloud - A Snicker of Magic by Natalie Lloyd!  It's about a girl named Felicity Juniper Pickle, who has moved around a lot and just wants to settle down and find a place to call home.  Felicity, her mom, and little sister have just moved to her mom's hometown, Midnight Gulch, Tennessee.  They say that there used to be magic in Midnight Gulch, and Felicity might find out that there's still a little bit left.  Ask your kids about it!

Writing:  We're working on our unit on Sentence Structure, and will be talking about vivid verbs, awesome adjectives, and how we can describe things so that out readers can experience what we see, feel, hear, taste, and touch right along with us.

Language:  This week we're talking about the four different sentence types, and subjects and predicates.

Social Studies:  This week we'll wrap up our North Carolina unit and begin reviewing continents, oceans, and maps.

Bible:  We'll find out how the apostles were persecuted for telling others about Jesus, and how they had to stand firm in what they believed, even when facing tough circumstances.  Our memory verse is:

• Be on your guard.  Stand firm in the faith.  Be brave.  Be strong.  
• 1 Corinthians 16:13

Have a blessed week!