Our Week in Review ~ The Cupid Shuffle ~ And A Happy Birthday Wish ~

This morning we celebrated the end of the Reading/Writing MCAS with a quick dance break. The fourth and fifth graders learned the Cupid Shuffle during PE, and we all danced together this morning. What a fun and invigorating way to begin our day!














After our dance, we wanted to take a minute and wish our favorite teacher, Miss Johnson, a happy birthday.






Our Week In Review

This week we began to read our next interactive read aloud, The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden. We have really enjoyed starting to meet the characters from this book. We will be focusing on the skills of making predictions, foreshadowing, and characters (and how they change over time).

We are also enjoying listening to The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan. This is a fun way to review the skills we've learned so far in reading. We are also focusing on visualizing with this book.

In math we are continuing learning about decimals and percents. This week we learned how to multiply and divide decimals. Our test is scheduled for Wednesday.

In Social Studies, we are continuing our journey across the USA. We are still in the Southeast! Our test day has not been finalized yet, but it will most likely be the week before vacation.

In Science, we are continuing to study weather. We will have a special weather guest next week, and are looking forward to it on Monday. Our test date on wind and clouds hasn't been confirmed yet, but will also most likely be just before vacation.

Our Week In Review

This week we continued learning about clouds, and created some cloud collages. The children are working hard and learning a lot of science!




In Reading, we continued to learn about myths. We may have the chance to write our own myths over the next few weeks.

Today we were assigned a new project called ROCK POETRY. Your child has a packet of information about this project. Rock Poetry Day will be a fun one!

In English today we reviewed some of the parts of speech that we've learned so far this year. Below are the Schoolhouse Rock videos for nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. We found that it is much harder to recognize a part of speech when we learn about them together instead of separately!

Nouns



Verbs


Adjectives


Adverbs

From the Teacher's Desk

Next week, on Monday and Tuesday, the fourth graders will take the Reading MCAS. There will be no formal homework on these days (with the exception of reading). I know that the children will work as hard on these days as they did on Tuesday.

Our new term began just a few weeks ago. I am already seeing some issues with homework. Many of the children are doing a great job with remembering everything needed for the day, however about half of the children already have at least one homework miss for this term. I have started to "step back" a little with some homework checks, to allow the children to be responsible and independent. For some students, this has been fabulous. Please help to encourage your children with homework. Having a clear place for homework and a solid routine may help if your child is struggling with this. Ask your child about his/her homework. If they aren't sure, please have them check in with me. I'm hoping the summer-like weather is partly to blame, and things will become better once the weather is a little cooler.

Our Week In Review

Well, it has been quite a few busy weeks in room 24~ Our update will start with today ! We gave our March Speeches and there were some really creative speeches! If your child was absent today, or didn't have a speech today, I have set some time aside on Wednesday for the make-ups. Below are some pictures of our speeches, and some videos from those who were willing!

This week in math we started to discuss the relationship between fractions, decimals and percents. One of the highlights for the children is that they can use calculators for some of this. This is a hard concept to master, but they have done well! To reinforce these skills, we learned two math games in the last two weeks ~ Fraction / Percent concentration and Fraction Match. We have a chance to play these games during math class a few times weekly. If you would like to try them out with your child, please encourage them to bring them home. (They just need to return the game cards each day.)














Last week we began learning about Mythology. This is a lot of fun for most of the children. We have read several myths, and the children have been bringing some of our myth books back and forth to school. We will continue learning about myths for the next few weeks, and finish the unit by making trading cards of the mythological creatures we've learned about.

Happy Birthday to our March Birthdays, Margot, Trevor, Aidan and MISS JOHNSON!!!

We loved having Miss Johnson in our room on Monday! It was a nice added treat.

In English we have been discussing PRONOUNS. Here is a Schoolhouse Rock Video on pronouns. We have watched it in school, and I think it would be helpful for the children to watch it before our Pronouns Test.

US Regions Links

• National Geographic ~ You Be The President
• Washington, D.C. ~ Virtual Tour
• White House For Kids
• National Park Site ~ Washington Monument
• More Washington, D.C.
• Washington, D.C. ~ A View On Cities
  
• Regions of the US ~ games