The Last Week of October

Can you believe that we are almost done with October? This week we have the 4th grade show, our Halloween parade, and LOTS to get done in the classroom. Here is a look at the week ahead:

Thank you to everyone who came to Open House last Thursday. I always like observing the kids showing off their work and their classroom. I know it means a lot to them (and to me!). Thanks for taking the time to come visit our room!

The Halloween parade will be on Friday afternoon. The parade will begin at 1:30. If the weather is nice, we will be parading outside. If it happens to rain, we will parade around in the commons area. Your child should not come to school that day in his/her costume! If your child is going home for lunch, then he/she should change at that time. If your child will eat at school, then the children will have time to change during lunch. Our room reps have worked hard to plan our Halloween party. I sent out a letter listing the food for the day. Please remember that no other candy or objects should be passed out at school.

Our 4th grade show will be this week! Feel free to come to one or both shows. Tuesday's show will be at 2:00 and Wednesday's show is at 9:45.

On Wednesday, the kids will have an opportunity to spend their recess with Taylor Swift! During the first half of the lunch period, we will be watching an interview with Taylor Swift that is sponsored by Scholastic Book Clubs. We're looking forward to hearing her views on why reading is important and what she was like during school years.

Our reading theme this week is "New Places, New Faces". The kids will read both fiction and nonfiction material to help them realize what it would be like to experience a new culture. We will be using our understanding of author's purpose to make inferences about characters and how they are feeling.

We will cover singular and plural nouns in grammar. The children will be expected to identify if a noun is singular or plural, and be able to change nouns to their plural forms.

There will be 2 spelling lists again this week. We will take our pretest on Monday and our final test on Friday. Our spelling lists deal with digraphs: th, sh, wh, and ph. Your child will receive his/her spelling list on Monday.

We will finish up our unit in math this week. The children will learn to use parentheses in number sentences and how to solve simple open number sentences. An example of an open number sentence is : n + 9= 17. The students would then need to solve for "n". The kids will take a review on Thursday and we will get our study links in order for the students to have at home to prepare for their test. Since I don't want to give a test on the day of our Halloween party, we will have our math test on Monday, November 1st. This will give the students more time to study for the test. We will begin Unit 4 on Friday which deals with decimals. A parent letter will be coming home near the end of the week that explains our next unit in more detail.

The kids are working on revising one piece of writing in their WEX notebooks. So far we have identified one area of the piece which is strong and one area which is weak. The students have worked to revise both of these parts by adding more details to SHOW the reader feelings, events, etc. This week the students will work on creating a strong introduction and placing their revisions in the correct spot. We want to make sure that the story has a sequence that is easy to follow. The kids will then write a final draft of their piece.

In social studies, we will work on a quick review of geography. The kids will be working with identifying continents, oceans, the equator, prime meridian, landforms, and locating latitude and longitude. We will be doing different hands on activities in class that require the students to work with task cards and maps in their History Alive notebook.

Thank you to Mrs. Schwartz and Mr. Twarog for our first Art Awareness lesson. We learned about the Native American tradition of weaving blankets to tell stories. The kids even had a chance to create their own blankets too!

I think that is all for this week. If you have any questions or concerns, please let me know! Have a great end to your October!