We made it through a full week last week. It was packed with fun activities for Red Ribbon Week and Fun Fair. This week we have another full week in the classroom and will end with some fun for Valentine's Day. Here is a look at our week ahead:
* Owen is our Star Student--we look forward to learning more about him!
* Six Flags Great America Six Hour Reading logs are due February 21st--it's coming up!!!
* New Scholastic catalogs will go home on Monday with the kids. Orders are due by next Monday, February 17th!
* Our Valentine's Day party will be Friday in afternoon. A letter with our class list and some reminders will go home with your child on Monday. I will also include a letter listing the food that is planned for our party. If you have any questions about ingredients, please let me know and we can try to get you copies of labels on the food. We will NOT be making boxes or bags in the classroom for valentines. The kids are welcome to bring in any box or bag that they decorate at home, however, to hold their goodies.
* We worked last week a bit on creating long responses in reading. The kids are using a "C-E-I-E-I-O" pattern…doesn't it remind you of Old McDonald? C stands for changing the question into a topic sentence for our answer. The E stands for finding evidence (specific examples) from the text to support our answer, and each I requires the kids to interpret or give their own thoughts about the example. Lots of higher order thinking happening when answering questions in reading now. We will continue to work with this format and practice with more example questions and passages.
* In math we will continue to practice angles. Last week we introduced angles in terms of looking at the clock and using a full circle of degrees. This week we will work to measure angles with an actual full circle protractor, as well as a half circle protractor. The kids will review vocabulary such as acute, obtuse, right, and straight angles. We will practice measuring angles and drawing them as well. The end of the week will have us practicing coordinate grids (x and y coordinates). We will have another dose of problem solving and explaining our answers in a written response. Lots and lots to do!!! Double digit divisors in long division are up to tackle next week--please be sure to practice your facts!!!!! The kids are encouraged to practice at least 30 minutes a week on ixl.com each week. I will send home a log for them this week to record their minutes. Some ideas to practice are: long division, mean/median/mode, angles, and factors.
* During our WEX time we will look at how writers show a character's emotions through actions. The kids will practice using descriptive words to show character traits. We will begin working with using dialogue to show emotion and personalities as well!
* We have covered alliteration, metaphors, similes, and onomatopoeias in our figurative language study. Next up…personification! The kids will see how authors give non-human things, human characteristics. For example, have you ever heard the wind whistle or seen stars dance in the sky? Those are both examples of personification.
* In grammar we will cover irregular verbs. These are verbs that we cannot simply add an -ed to in order to show an event has happened in the past. We will do lots of practicing with these verbs since they can be tricky to remember.
* In science we will cover electrical safety for both indoor and outdoor settings. We will also experiment a bit with parallel and series circuits. The kids will receive a study guide over our current electricity unit near the end of the week. We will take our final test over current electricity on Wednesday next week.
* Greek Mythology is still in our future--this week we learn where the term narcissistic come from!
* The Winter Olympics are upon us! Each grade level in our school has been assigned a country to follow. The fourth grade country is Austria! We will learn a bit about this country as a class. The kids will also have an opportunity to follow and learn about other countries in the Olympics. They picked their countries last Friday-- be sure to ask which ones they are following!
* It's another busy week, but I hope it's a great one for everyone. Happy Valentine's Day!
