We had a great start to November last week and I'm sure we'll continue to have a wonderful rest of the month ahead. This is a short week for the students (no school on Friday, due to School Improvement Day),and we will be very busy in the classroom trying to catch up on the one day we miss. Here is a look at the week ahead:
* Colin is our MVP!
* Welcome, Neha! We are excited to have another student join our class. Neha came from Tarkington School and we're lucky to have her in our class!
* Conference forms went home with your child on Friday. Please take a look at the scheduled time and fill out the bottom half of the form. Send the bottom of the form back with your child to confirm your date/time. This will allow me to reschedule any conferences if necessary.
* Preconference 3-2-1 also went home on Friday (this was stapled to your conference date/time). Please fill this out and return it by November 16th, so that I can better prepare for our time together. Thank you in advance for doing this!
* Our spelling list this week contains words with the /ar/ and /ir/ patterns. The test this week will be on Thursday, since there is no school on Friday.
* We will work on possessive nouns in grammar. The kids will identify and use both singular and plural possessive nouns. They will also learn what to add to a word to show that something is possessive.
* The class is busy writing their final copies of their personal narratives during our WEX time. They are taking time to rewrite their first draft and making sure to add in their introductions, conclusions, and revisions that we have made throughout the past couple of weeks. I'm very impressed with the improvements that their revisions have made in their writing. I'm sure you will be too!
* We begin Unit 4 in math this week. A parent letter about Unit 4 was sent home on Friday. This unit covers decimals. We will take a look at decimal place value, basic decimal concepts, and compare/order decimals this week. There is a section on the ixl.com website that is a great resource to help review and practice decimals. We have 2 weeks left of our free trial. Please encourage your child to use this site at home, as I will be looking for feedback about it in the near future.
* In reading, we will continue our work with novels during guided reading. We will also begin a study of making inferences. What is an inference? Inferences are thought of as the "bedrock of understanding" (Stephanie Harvey and Anne Goudvis, 2005). Making inferences involves drawing conclusions from information that is not explicitly stated in the text. Kids use their background knowledge, along with clues from the text to come up with an idea. Inferential thinking helps readers to make predictions, surface themes, and draw conclusions. This can also help answer lingering questions we have about something we have read. Using context clues also helps us figure out new vocabulary by using text evidence.
* Our first social studies quiz is on Monday! This will cover everything we have learned so far about geographic features, physical features, and using latitude/longitude. We began our Understanding by Design project last week in the LMC with Mrs. Polito. The kids will be taking information from Chapters 3 and 4 in our History Alive book and doing a research project. 4th graders will work to learn about Native American tribes and how the tribes adapted to their surroundings. They will work in groups of 2 or 3 to learn about a specific tribe, study the culture, and then determine what tools/supplies they will need to adapt if their tribe needed to move to another region. The kids will be using a variety of technology for this project and will present their learning in a final presentation (which we are keeping as a surprise for the kids right now). When we have social studies time in class, we will learn about the migration routes of the Native Americans and some general facts about environments in which they lived.
* As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please let me know. Have a great week!
