Dear 4B Families,
I hope everyone had a nice weekend. Thank you all for your generous support of the Magazine Sale—it was a great success. The date for the mid-trimester reports was incorrect in last week’s newsletter. They will come home with your children on Friday, October 25th.
Touching Safety Program: Holy Rosary School, along with all the schools in the Archdiocese, will continue teaching the sexual abuse prevention program called Touching Safety. This program is provided to us by the Archdiocese of Seattle and is part of our ongoing effort to help create and maintain a safe environment for children and protect all children from sexual abuse. We will be teaching two lessons again this year. The first will be this month (October), the second in March. For more information check the information on this page. The topic of the October lesson is Boundaries: Students learn about personal boundaries and how identifying and honoring those boundaries can give a child or young person the self assurance needed to speak up when someone tries to step over the line. If you do not wish your child to take part in these lessons you will need to fill out this opt out form and return it to school by this Wednesday, October 16th. Thank you.
Religion: By the end of the week the reading and speaking/singing parts for the All Saint’s Day Mass will be selected. Even though all students will not be able to have individual speaking or singing parts, they will each play an integral part in the Mass as a representative of their Saint when they “March In,” stand when their name is called during the litany, and by reciting the Prayer of St. Francis following Communion. We will be practicing in the Church beginning next Friday.
Continue to practice the Prayer of St. Francis. It is a great bedtime prayer, and practicing right before you go to sleep helps with retention! This visual version might also be helpful for practice.
udents bring in a rosary if they have one on Wednesday. We will be reviewing how to pray the Rosary in class on Wednesday and Thursday to prepare for this special service. I have extra rosaries for those students that need one. Thank you.
Reading: We are enjoying getting to know the characters in Charlotte’s Web. The students are working on their own Postcards from the Barn, which they will share with you at their conference in November. They will also be on display in the hallway. The vocabulary words that we are focusing on from the story are also on Vocabulary/Spelling City. Students can review the words and their meanings, which will help them prepare for a final vocabulary test when we finish the book.
Spelling/LA: Spelling lists for Unit 2 ; vowel-consonant-e, were sent home last Thursday, and the test will be this Friday the 18th. The students are doing lots of writing at school! In addition to the Postcards from the Barn, we are also creating Halloween Haikus and we are hard at work on our Saint Reports.
Math: Look for corrected chapter 2 math tests in your child’s filer. The students did quite well on the test. We are moving into our units on multiplication and division of larger numbers. We will begin with the basics, which also means getting back to mastery/quick recall of the facts. I have moved all students to multiplication on Xtramath. I would like them to visit Xtramath at least 4 times each week (in 7 days) until all facts are mastered. It is best to complete only one session each visit, rather than doing several sessions in one sitting.
All of the students will be introduced to an adaptive online math program called Redbird that will support and build a deeper understanding of our math content. We are able to monitor their work in real time which will allow us to support their work and progress. The visual below gives a brief overview. You can also learn more and see some samples by going to this link. In coming weeks some homework may be given from this site. Stay tuned.
Social Studies: The latitude, longitude and map skills test will take place this Thursday, October 17th. All students have a study sheet in their filer to review terms. We will review for the map portion of the test in class on Tuesday. All students have a study sheet of the NE States and features in their filer. The NE States test will take place on October 24th.
Science: This week in science, we will continue to read Leif’s story, “Catching the Wind.” Students will also be exploring the idea of simple machines by looking at Rube Goldberg machines. Check out this video to see some amazing machines created by different groups of people. The idea is to create a machine that completes a simple task in an indirect and overly complicated way. If you’ve ever played Mouse Trap, you’ve used a Rube Goldberg machine!
- Look for math homework each night.
- Visit Xtramath at least 4 times (in 7 days).
- Spelling vowel consonant e
- Review for latitude and longitude test (test Thursday) with study sheet that will come home Tuesday
- Review for NE States test
And as always:
- Read
- Talk about new learning.
Have a great week everyone.
Ms. Benson