Dear 4B Families,

Happy October!

Our fall MAP testing will wrap up this week with the language arts section. I am proud of the hard work and attention the students gave to the math portion of the test last week.   

A Message from Ms. Samson: Holy Rosary Families, I hope the school year is going well for you! My name is Lauren Samson, I’m the new school counselor at Holy Rosary. I will be helping the students during classroom counseling lessons, group work, and one-on-one meetings. I know COVID has been extremely stressful and has created anxiety for many students. My goal as the school counselor is to help all students develop coping strategies and tools to deal with life challenges. As I continue to work with all students at Holy Rosary my aim is to help them with developing life-long problem-solving skills that allow them to become more responsible, kind, assertive, and respectful individuals. I’m available to do check-ins with students that need social-emotional support or are struggling. I’m at Holy Rosary Monday- Thursday. I’m going into classrooms on a regular basis to teach Second Step, Kelso’s choices, and helping students with bullying and problem-solving. Please Feel Free to reach out to me at lsamson@holyrosaryws.org. Below is an overview of what we will begin covering this first trimester of the school year.

3^rd -5^th grade

Kelso’s Choice Curriculum: K.C.’s wheel is a simplified version of Kelso’s choices that is aimed at helping preteens with problems that they are facing. Minor problems cause minor feelings of annoyance, embarrassment, boredom, etc. There also “serious problems” that need to be taken to an adult because they are dangerous and could involve someone’s safety. There are verbal choices and non-verbal choices.

Saint Project: We are excited for the upcoming All Saints Day Masses.  

• All 4th grade students will participate in the All-School Mass dressed as their Saint on Monday, November 1st at 8:45am. Each 4th grade student can have one or two family members sit with them during the Mass. We will be creating a Sign Up Genius that should be ready the week of October 11th for each family to sign up and let us know how many family members will be attending with your child. 
• The 4th grade saints are also encouraged to attend one of the weekend Masses dressed in their saint costume (Saturday the 30th at 5:30, Sunday the 31st at 8:30 or 10:30).

What we need from you at this time:

1. Start planning a costume for your child.  Costumes do not have to be fancy.  Many students use robes, graduation gowns, or just material that’s laying around.  Look up pictures of your child’s saint for ideas.  We also encourage some type of symbol that relates to the saint, like a cross, bible, flowers, basket, etc.  There are pictures of past saints in the tab above called Saint Project.
2. Be on the lookout for the Sign-Up Genius.

Math: We are continuing our chapter on addition and subtraction of large numbers. We are working towards Striving for Accuracy with math computation, which means reading questions carefully, and double-checking work as needed. Most of the errors on classwork have been with basic computation or rushing through the steps of adding and subtracting without thinking carefully. Students should always properly label and write sentences for answers to story problems. For instance, if a problem asks, “How many Skittles does Karla have altogether?”, their answer should look like: Karla has 341 skittles altogether. When answers to story problems are correctly labeled it shows that the problem is clearly understood.  Students are encouraged to underline important information in story problems to focus their reading. There will be nightly math homework this week.

Social Studies:  WE will be moving into a study of the early explorers by sea that traveled to what would eventually become Washington State.  The students will learn about Juan de Fuca, George Vancouver, Robert Gray and more!  Friday, October 22nd, the students will be tested on the locations and abbreviations of the 11 NE States.  They will also need to be able to label the locations of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, Atlantic Ocean, Canada, Cape Cod and Long Island.  All students should have a study sheet in their filer. You can also access additional study sheets in the Map Study Sheet on the 4A Website.

Science: Students will be going through sense stations this week. Each station will test the students’ senses as well as help them to think about the ways in which the brain sends messages throughout the body. Normally, we would include all senses in the stations at school. Because of the pandemic, we will do modified versions of taste and smell. 

Reading: Last week, students finished the final figurative language Project “Sailing the Seas of Hyperbole.” Each student created her/his own sail with figurative language chosen from one of the many seafaring tall tales that we read in class. The pictures below show the finished product. Amazing job, 4th graders! This week, we will continue to read Charlotte’s Web. Our focus will be on writing complete responses to questions. Students will get practice answering thought-provoking questions while restating the question, answering the question being asked, explaining thinking with evidence, and going back to check over the response. 

Spelling: The words this week focus on short vowel sounds. The study sheet was passed out last Friday and should be in your child’s filer. The test this week will be on Friday as usual. 

Language Arts/Religion: Thank you all so much for your hard work at home with your children to read and prepare the notes for the saint report last week.  This week the students will be completing their first drafts, and begin the process of editing and revising.  The students will also get to start on some of the artistic sections of their project.  Remember to also keep practicing the Prayer of St. Francis. All students need to be able to recite this prayer from memory by October 26th at the latest.

 

Have a wonderful week everyone. 

Ms. Benson