Our Week In Review

Happy Halloween!

With two half days, and many fun activities, this week really flew by!

On Monday, we turned in our chips at our class store!  Thank you again for all who donated items for purchase.  We loved it!

We finished reading Mr. Popper's Penguins on Wednesday, and celebrated with Black and White Day.  What a fun day it was!  We enjoyed black and white snacks,

played Charades/Win Lose or Draw with words from the story,

and even created some Antarctic Art!

We finished our unit about addition and subtraction in math, and had a test Thursday.  Many students had the opportunity to log onto the PearsonRealize website to take the practice test.  What an awesome way to study!  We felt pretty good about how we did.

Today was Halloween.  Our day began with a "meeting" in the gym.  All of the fourth grade teachers, Mrs. Richards, Mrs. Perry, Mrs. Murray, Mrs. Kroeber, and Mrs. Dulmaine dressed as zombies and did the Thriller Dance.  It was a great way to begin our day.

We finished our Halloween Haikus, our narratives and our thank you letters to Mr. Popper today during our Writer's Workshop.  During math we completed some Halloween math.  We also made a Halloween Diorama,  It was tricky for us to follow the directions, but we figured it out!  Mrs. Merten asked about our Halloween costumes today.  What a variety we have!  If you would like to spotlight your costume on our blog, please send in a photo.


From the Teacher's Desk:
It was wonderful to meet all of you this week!  Transition to fourth grade can be challenging, and I appreciate the openness of our conversations.  As always, if you have a question or a concern about anything happening at school, please don't hesitate to contact me.  

• email:  mertenk@franklin.k12.ma.us

Our Week In Review

It was a very, very busy week this week!

We continue to read our interactive read aloud, Mr. Popper's Penguins.  We are working hard at "getting to know" Mr. Popper by looking at his actions and words to think about his character traits. Thinking about character traits of a literary character allows us to make solid predictions of their behavior.  Making predictions is another way to think as we read. Reading is thinking!

Another Book Talk

We wrapped up our Social Studies unit on Map Skills and took our test this week.  We will begin on Monday studying the country of Mexico.

We continued collaborating with each other, working on a reading/writing assignment using the Chromebooks.

In math, we finished our unit on place value, and began to review addition and subtraction of whole numbers.  We will be practicing these skills in the next few weeks. 

Next week ~ The Champs vs. The Teacher

For the students:

Here is our friendly lizard.  Katie has suggested we name him Hank. If you have other suggestions, please leave them in the comments. 

From the Teacher's Desk:

I am looking forward to meeting you all next week to discuss your child's progress and transition into fourth grade.  You should receive a reminder email from signup genius two days prior to our scheduled conference.  If you haven't had a chance to fill out the parent conference survey, please take a minute to do so.  It will help to guide our discussion. The link to the survey is here.

Happy Diwali!

Today is Diwali, also known as the "Festival of Lights".  Diwali is the five-day festival of lights, celebrated by millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Jains across the world. The actual day of Diwali is traditionally celebrated on the festival's third day, which this year falls on Thurs., Oct. 23. The festival usually falls between the middle of Oct. and the middle of Nov., although this is decided upon by the Hindu lunar calendar.  Happy Diwali to all of the families celebrating today!  Here is Nihara, dressed and ready for her celebration!   To learn more about Diwali, click here.

What a week!

We had a wonderful week this week!

We started the week on Tuesday observing pond water. We also had a science quiz on Thursday. In science we have also been observing our grass seed experiment.  After a week of observations, some students changed their prediction about the best soil.  

We have been enjoying reading Mr. Popper's Penguins, and have been working diligently to make predictions.  We have also been learning how to track character traits, but tracking Mr. Popper. We used what we have been learning to work on writing a thank you note in Mr. Popper's voice.

We continue to hear a book talk each day, and are gathering a lot o titles for our "someday" lists.

We have been learning and practicing concepts around place value, and reading and writing big numbers.  We will have a quiz on these concepts on Wednesday.  If you or your child would like to check out the Pearson website, the log in information is as follows:
User Name:  NUMBER @franklinps.net
Password: fpsPearson1  (I will be changing the passwords soon, and will send home a note with your child when that happens)

Fabulous Friday!  What a wonderful start to our day!  As the students arrived this morning, we listened to "Happy" in the gym and participated in some creative movement.  What a great way to use up our energy before starting our day!

From the Teacher's Desk

Nightly reading is an important part of our reading instruction.  One objective of the nightly reading is to give the students the opportunity to practice the reading skills we have been working on in class with a "just right" book.  At this time, the focus area on the reading log can be:

• Asking Questions
• Making Predictions
• Genre
• Character Traits

The children should be reading nightly and recording the information on their logs.  Please continue to encourage your child to complete this nightly reading.  

I am looking forward to talking with you at Parent/Teacher Conferences.  Please take a minute and respond to this survey, to help guide our conference.

Our Week In Review

This week began with our class cashing in our earned points for a class reward. We have been working to earn points from our specialist teachers based on our excellent behavior.  We had earned 20 points, and we used 15 of them to take an extra recess on Monday.  It was a great use of our points.

We also had the opportunity to use our chips to shop in our class store.  We enjoyed purchasing items such as pencils, pens, and small candy items.  Someone even purchased Mrs. Merten's chair for the day!

This week we had a blast in Science!  We have been practicing using the Scientific Method.  We planted some grass seed in three types of soil, and placed the plants on the windowsill in the sun. Each of us predicted which type of soil would grow the best grass.  We have been watching and watering every day, but so far we have no sprouts.  We also had the chance to look through hand held magnifiers.  We looked at salt, and sketched what we saw.  Many of us thought that the salt looked like an ice cube!  On Tuesday we will have the opportunity to look at water from various ponds around the area.  If your child has the opportunity to bring in water from a pond, stream, etc., please send it in on Tuesday.

We had our second math test this week, and Mrs. Merten was very proud of how well we did!  We also had the opportunity to log into our new math program today during technology.  The students brought home a pink sheet with directions for logging in.  Passwords will be reset after the weekend.

math review groups

We began our first Interactive Read Aloud this week.  We received a "package" from the main office on Thursday, and learned that we will be reading Mr. Popper's Penguins. This book is terrific, and is nothing like the movie.

Matt gave a book talk about a Geronimo Stilton book.

We also heard a book talk about Ivy and Bean by Annie Barrows