Winter Wonderland!

Winter Wonderland Day was a success! We began our day with a math lesson about adding and subtracting fractions. This is something we will be working on throughout this unit. Today was our first day, and the children did a great job!

After math, we went to Mrs. Williams' room, where she helped us to fold snowflakes. We were impressed with how much math was involved in this activity. Next week, we will be writing poetry about snow and/or snowflakes.

Later in the day, the fourth grade got together to watch a movie called Snow Buddies. We really enjoyed this! We were able to make several connections to our last interactive read aloud, Stone Fox.

Our Week in Review

This week, we continued learning about parts of speech with adjectives. Below is the Schoolhouse Rock Video that we watched (and will watch) to help remember this part of speech.

In reading, we have continued reading Snow Treasure by Marie McSwiggan. We have been discussing figurative language, and this week we began tracking some of the characters. We are looking at the characters in a different way, and when we finish this book the children will have to answer the question "Would I like this character as a friend?". The children are enjoying this adventure story.

FEBRUARY BIRTHDAYS

Happy Birthday to our February Birthdays, Jillian and Conlon!

From the Teacher's Desk

The children continue to make good progress in fourth grade! Many of them are improving with their test preparation and their ability to finish homework and return it to school. This does continue to be a struggle for some. Setting a schedule with a specific homework place and time can help with this. Often times the work is finished but it is forgotten at home. If this is a problem for your child, a checklist may help. I encourage the children to use their Assignment Notebooks as a checklist, but perhaps one that is more obvious would work.

At times I write "See Me" on your child's paper. When I write this it is because I am looking to have a conversation with your child, and often gather more information about the particular assignment. I realize that it is hard to know if your child did, in fact, see me. When I have seen a child, I will cross off the see me in a different colored pen/pencil. That is the cue that I have seen the child.

One site that I use often is Brainpop. This site has many 3-4 minute video clips about a wide variety of topics. The children really love the videos, and they learn something, too! Although many of the videos we use are subscription based, there are several videos that can be viewed for free, without a subscription.