The Week of January 10th

We made it through our first week of 2011! The kids did a great job transitioning into the new year and getting back into our classroom routine. This is another packed week for us. Here is a look ahead:

Thank you to Mrs. Gomez for teaching us in our second Art Awareness lesson. The kids learned about mosaics and art pieces made with jade. What a fun way to start off our week last week!

In reading this week, our Native American knowledge will come in handy. We will be reading a Native American legend to help us review our sequencing skills. We will also continue to work in our small reading groups on our novels. The kids are doing a great job of journaling and inferring with their new novels.

Our spelling lists this week contain words with plural endings. The kids will be working with s, -es, and -ies endings. We will take a pretest on Monday to determine the children's lists. They will be required to do a word sort and 2 menu items for their homework this week.

In grammar, we continue to work verbs. We will review helping verbs and introduce linking verbs. The kids will learn the difference between the two and the correct use of them.

In writing the kids will work on a new type of revision assignment. The kids will work on adding specific details from their reading exerpts to help make better connections to their reading. We will be working on comparing and contrasting our own lives to the main character's personality, actions, and setting. Be sure to ask your child about Shirley's (the main character) journey from China to Brooklyn, as well as, her experiences in school and stores.

We will do our last lesson in our math unit on Monday. This will deal with working in large numbers. Tuesday and Wednesday will be review days for us over the entire chapter. Our focus will be on multiplication. The kids are finding that although they are confident in the process of double digit multiplication, it is their actual knowledge of facts that is keeping them from getting the correct answers. It is so important that the kids continue to practice their math facts at home! Our unit test will be on Thursday. Friday will be a day spent on problem solving. We will begin our new unit next week!

We began talking about atoms in science last week. The kids worked with protons, neutrons, and electrons. This week we will talk about how electrons can "jump" to make static electricity. Monday we will do experiments with static electricity and we will spend the remainder of the week on a larger form of static electricity---lightning.

During the 2nd and 3rd trimesters of 4th grade, the teachers send home midterms to let you know of your child's progress in all academic areas. These midterms will come home on Friday. Please keep in mind that in no way are these the final grades that will be on your child's report card. However, please DO talk over these grades with your child to make goals for the last half of the trimester or identify areas that we can praise and improve on.

Book orders came home last week. They are due by Friday, January 21st. If you would like to order online--even with the coupon--that is great! You can use the Scholastic link that is located under our educational website portion of the blog. If you would like to fill out the order form and send in the payment (CHECK ONLY), that will be fine too!

If you have any questions or concerns about anything, please don't hesitate to contact me. Have a great week!