We are back to a full week of school this week and thank goodness for that! We have a ton to get done!
* Amanda is our star student. We look forward to learning more about her!
* Biography book reports were explained on Friday. Your child is expected to read a "just right" biography in the months of February and March. They will need to get their biography checked by me by this Friday, February 28th. They do not need to read the book by then, but simply have it. The actual report and presentation is not due until March 20th. We will share our biographies in class and learn a bit about important people in history.
* This is our last week before our ISAT testing. I will send out a final schedule with next week's blog. The students will be able to bring in an extra healthy snack for each day that week. We will have one in the morning before testing and one in the afternoon after testing. As of now, we will be taking one test on Monday, two tests Tuesday-Thursday, and our last test on Friday. I am hoping to have a celebration with the students on Friday for all of their hard work! I will send out more details as things are finalized.
* Since this is our last week before ISAT testing, we will be doing a lot of review in all subject areas to help the kids prepare. As I stated in our last blog, the kids will do great! We just want to make sure they are comfortable with the procedures and topics that they will see next week. It's important that you keep encouraging them at home to do their best and hang in there. We are almost there!
* In reading we will review genres, figurative language, mythology, and also practice our long responses. The kids are doing a wonderful job picking out specific parts of the text to back up their answers. We are working to make our interpretations of these quotations a bit more meaningful. We will also review poetry, prose, and rhyme scheme. These are all things that the kids have been exposed to throughout the year and throughout their schooling--it's just the vocabulary that may not seem familiar to them.
* In WEX, we spent last week working with dialogue. The kids are doing a great job showing emotion through the words that are being spoken by a character. We still need some practice on correctly punctuating these sentences though! This week we will take a look at how powerful verbs and speech tags can be in a sentence. For example, if someone mumbles something, compared to screams something, we can tell how excited they are about it. The kids will begin to narrow down their choices of how they would describe our main character, James. This character trait will be our focus for their final paper which we will be creating in class in the upcoming weeks.
* In math we will review Chapter 6 on Monday and then take our final test on Tuesday. The kids received a study guide over this material on Friday. We will spend the rest of the week reviewing various topics such as: perimeter, area, volume, data points, and probability. We will also do many practices with the long response problem solvers so that the kids can use their mathematical vocabulary to explain the process of solving the problem and their reasons for doing it that way.
* The month of February is notorious for being a rigorous one due to the close of the trimester, impending ISAT testing, and the increased responsibilities of fourth grade. Please keep telling your child what a great job he/she is doing-- a little compliment goes a long way. We are almost through the month! Hang in there, everyone!
~Mrs. Galazka
