Dear 4B Families,
What an excellent first week of school with my wonderful new 4th grade students. It is clear to see that this will be an amazing year—with such a bright, kind, creative and fun group of students. I so enjoyed talking with you all on Parent’s Night. Remember, if you have any questions, suggestions, or concerns, please contact me! We are partners together in your child’s learning.
It looks like I am still missing some email addresses for our 4B email list. I will be sending a paper copy of the newsletter on Monday, and you should also receive a test email from me next weekend. Please let me know if you do not receive an email, or if you would like to change any of your email addresses. You can expect a weekly email from me with the newsletter link and occasional emails with important reminders. I promise not to email too often! Thank you.
If you have not yet returned your yellow student profile or green iPad user agreement form, please be sure to do so ASAP.
As we move into our second week of school, we will continue to practice the routines and expectations of 4th grade. The time we spend on these procedures now help to set the stage for a successful year. Our regular curriculum schedule will also start to move into place.
Spelling: Each student should have the spelling words for We will also be using a site called Spelling City this year. The site has lots of activities that will help the students review and practice their weekly lists. Your child’s password for the site is in your Parent’s Night packet. Some spelling homework will come from this site.
Reading: Last week Ms. Corrigan began administering an oral reading assessment to the students, which will be completed Tuesday. These assessments, along with a silent reading and vocabulary assessment we will administer this week, will help us to better understand the individual reading needs of each student, and in turn, assist us in our planning for the year. On Wednesday, we will begin a story from our reading anthology, “Stormalong”, a tall tale. We will be focusing on character and the figurative language concepts of hyperbole, simile, and metaphor.
Language Arts: We will be finishing up some introductory Venn Diagrams and getting to know you presentations this week. Along with our spelling and vocabulary work, we will be reviewing cursive letterforms, and paper headings.
Math: The students will be taking a beginning of the year math assessment on Monday that will help me to better plan for upcoming lessons. Our lessons this week will focus on place value and comparing/ordering numbers. Measurement work will also be included in our math/science/social studies lessons. As a class we will visit the Mathletics site and set up some expectations for use of the site. Look for math homework on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday this week.
Religion: During this Wednesday’s mass, Fr. Oakland will bless the 4th grade Bibles. We will be doing some
introductory activities on the parts of the Bible, how to look up verses, as well as learn a bit about the history of the Bible. Lastly, the students will be making personalized bookmarks for their Bibles.
Social Studies/Science: Ms. Simpson and I will be switching classes for science and social studies on Mondays and Thursdays this year. This week we will be meeting our classes and doing some introductory lessons. In social studies, our initial lessons will focus on map work. We will review the continents and oceans and begin a study of latitude and longitude. Next Thursday, September 21st, the 4th graders will be tested on the Seven Continents and Five Oceans. All students will have study sheets in their filers on Monday. You can also access a study sheet on the 4A webpage under the tab at the top of the page called Map Study Sheets. The students will also need to have the Continent and Ocean poem memorized by September 21st. There is a tab at the top of our web page with the continent poem. In science we will be doing an introductory lab. This lab will be a great way to introduce lab procedures that we will be using all year long. Next week, we will begin our first EIE kit, Catching the Wind.
Be on the lookout for information on our “gritty” classroom in next week’s newsletter. Grit and Growth Mindset fall into the same category. This short video is a good introduction to growth mindset. These are the traits we will be introducing this year to help us become gritty!
COURAGE, TENACITY, HARD WORK, OPTIMISM, RESILIENCE, SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE, GRATITUDE, CONSCIENTIOUSNESS, PERSEVERANCE, DELAYED GRATIFICATION, PERSISTENCE, SELF-CONTROL AND OPEN-MINDEDNESS.
Have a great week and I’ll see you at WestFest!