Newsletter February 19th

Dear 4B Families,

We had a fantastic Valentine party!  Thank you so much to all the parents that helped out with this fun event.  I was so impressed with the creative Valentine boxes the students created.  A great time was had by all!

Oral Biography Projects: Hopefully all of the students are immersed in reading and researching their chosen biography choice.  This is not a project that can wait until the last minute.  Next week we will spend some time in class talking about the presentations and how to best prepare.  They will see some samples and I will answer any questions that the students have. We will also teach strategies for note-taking using notecards. All students should bring their biographies to school on Wednesday, February 19th. Later, I will also be going over how to write bibliographies and give the students a form they can use to simplify the process.  There is a tab above (called Oral Biography Project) with PDFs of the directions and rubrics for the project.

Oral Biography Presentations will be from March 26th to April 3rd. I will be sending out a Google Doc to sign up for presentation times the last week of February.

Spelling: There is no spelling this week. New lists for the February 28th test will come home Friday.

Social Studies: The  50 state test is this Thursday, February 20th. The students were given review sheets that they should have in their filers. We will be wrapping up our Lewis and Clark unit by the end of the month and moving into our unit on the Oregon Trail in March.

Science: Last week, we started our PLTW Brain Module! Students conducted an experiment to show that messages travel to the brain through an input and messages travel back to the body through an output. We also did some partner research on the nervous system, the brain, and the spinal cord. Next, we will model the different parts of the brain and show inputs/outputs.

Math:  Keep up regular practice on fact practice.  Our class lessons will remained focused on long division and interpreting remainders in story problems. Thank you for your continued support at home in checking your child’s homework for accuracy.

Religion: The students are learning about the Sacraments. All students will need to be able to name from memory the Seven Sacraments and the categories of each sacrament. Study sheets are be in the students’ filers and can also be accessed in the religion content tab above. This test will take place February 21st.