Newsletter Week of November 16th

Hello 4B Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! In Thanksgiving reflection, I am so grateful for all of the support I receive from all of you! I’m also thankful for the wonderful students that I have the pleasure of teaching everyday. I am excited for our upcoming Celebrations of Learning!

Celebrations of Learning (Conferences): Students are busy preparing for conferences next week. Your child will be leading us in prayer, sharing some of their work, and discussing goals for 2nd trimester. I look forward to meeting with you all as we discuss your child’s progress and goals. If you haven’t yet signed up for a zoom time slot, you can do so here.

Thanksgiving Service: Normally at this time of the year, we would be visiting the Pike Market Food Bank and making donations. Unfortunately, the pandemic has prevented us from taking this trip. However, we can still be in service to others. So, as a Thanksgiving project, students will be creating some art rooted in gratitude as well as writing a note (or a few!) to attach to food items that we will donate to St. Vincent DePaul in West Seattle. We are encouraging students to find ways to earn items to donate. Please help your child with this…think chores around the house or yard, safely helping out neighbors with raking or other tasks, etc. We appreciate your support, and we are excited to continue our tradition of giving!

Reading: We are thundering (as Lurvy would say) through Charlotte’s Web! This week, we will focus on Chapters 11-14. Students are becoming increasingly more independent in choosing meaningful quotes and writing sentences with context clues. Check out your child’s folder to see all of the hard work they’ve been doing! We are also working on improving fluency.

Language Arts: This week the students will be focusing on composing well-written sentences that use context clues to support Charlotte’s Web vocabulary.  The students will be practicing by using five different methods of defining words within an original sentence.  We will also focus on accurate conventions (punctuation, grammar and spelling).  By the end of the week the students will have written nine outstanding sentences!  The students will also be introduced to a wonderful online writing site called StoryJumper. We will use this site all year, with all subject areas.

Spelling: The spelling words this week all have the long i sounds spelled: i, i-C-e, y, igh, ey, uy.  This test will be this Friday as usual.

Science: This week, students will be using their clay brain models again! They will use yarn to trace the path of inputs and outputs that are processed through the brain. If you don’t have your clay brain models anymore, you can print off a BodyOutline here. Students can simply draw the brain parts for the purposes of this project. After this project is finished, we will not be using the clay brain models anymore.

Social Studies: We will be finishing up our initial work with the Native People of Washington State (but they will be a regular part of all aspects of our Washington State History moving forward).  After Thanksgiving we will move into the early explorers of what would become Washington State.  The combination NE/SE test will take place on Tuesday, November 17th.  This time the students will use a test paper from a packet I sent home in the October pick up.  All parents are asked to sign this test to confirm that he/she took the test with no maps or other helper sheets available.  Thank you! 

Math: Our math work this week will focus on multiplication of one and two digit numbers.  Keep up the Xtramath work on multiplication and division—at least 4 times weekly (not counting what we do at school).

Have a great week!

Ms. Benson