Our Week In Review

Though it was a short week, we were able to complete a lot !

In Math, we have been working on place value skills.  This week we worked on reading and writing large numbers.  We also talked about the value of digits in numbers.  We will be learning about BIG numbers for a few weeks (numbers to the billions).  This week we also learned a math game, Name That Number.  We will be learning another game next week.  Ask your children about these games.  They are easy to play at home with basic cards and/or dice, and a wonderful way to reinforce our math lessons.

Name That Number!

During Reader's Workshop we have really been working to establish our routines.  We have also started talking about Narrative Elements (the parts of a story).  Laying the groundwork for our routines and literature basics will allow us to stretch our reading wings as the year progresses.  We have also been working in Reading "Zone".  Mrs. Merten is quite impressed with our stamina!  Mrs. Merten has been filling our bookbags with books that she thinks will interest us.  We are excited to give them a try.

The Reading Zone

                    One Reading Note:  One important part of our Reader's Workshop is the children read the same book at home and at school. This book should travel back and forth with your child.  The books can come from our class library, your home, or the school or public libraries.  This is a new expectation, and many children are still developing a routine to help remember to bring the book back to school.  Anything you can do to support this would be appreciated!

During Writer's Workshop, we began to talk about writing goals for fourth grade.  So far we have come up with some things that were hard for us last year, or things that we just would like to get better at.

Fridays continue to be spent on Creative Arts. This week, we were treated with a demonstration from our Music Department.  Teachers from the "String School" and after school band were at JFK to demonstrate the instruments that student have the opportunity to play.The teachers then played some music to show how the instruments would fit into a band or orchestra.

They were great!  If your child is interested in this opportunity, a note was sent home on Friday.

We have been working on writing poems about ourselves in Poetry workshop with Mrs. Williams.  We are almost finished writing these.  During technology workshop, we have been learning how to navigate the JFK website, our class blogs, and how to set bookmarks for ourselves (to get back to these sites easily throughout the year).  We also learned how to open/create a Microsoft Word document and how to save it into our folder. Next week, we hope to begin typing our biopoems.  Finally, during Art with Mrs. Hess, we worked together to create abstract sculptures. Then we drew the sculptures.  Stay tuned for pictures of our sculptures and our sketches!

The Technology Lab

Check out Mrs. Williams and Sammi~ They didn't know it, but they dressed alike this morning!

 



From the Teacher's Desk 
What a great start to the year! The children have really settled into the routine and are doing a great job!  One part of our blog that I like to highlight is the section "Spotlight On...".  If your child (or your family) does something exciting or special, please let Mrs. Merten know.  We can "Spotlight" your child on this blog.  In the past, we have "spotlighted" students playing in a basketball tournament, winning a medal in gymnastics or skating, celebrating Diwali, and so much more!  We even spotlighted a new puppy!  If you have something for this section of our blog, please email Mrs. Merten.  Next week is our Parent Information Session.  I hope to see you there ~ Wednesday, September 11, 3:00-3:30 and 3:30-4:00.

Our Week In Review

 Our week was filled with science activities.  We have been closely monitoring our growing grass seed, and have found that some of our hypotheses were right on the money!  We will continue to grow and water our grass for another week or two, and then develop a conclusion to our experiment. We also had a chance to look in microscopes at salt and at pond water.  We worked with Mrs. Williams' class and enjoyed sharing our water samples.

 

We also learned some new games in math to help us to practice our multiplication facts. This week we had a chance to play Baseball Multiplication and Multiplication top it.  Both of these games can be played at home with dice or playing cards, and are excellent ways to practice math facts.

From the Teacher's Desk:

Our first science quiz/assessment is scheduled for Tuesday.  The children have a study guide, with the vocabulary needed written on the back.  I have asked all students to bring home their science folders.  In addition, we took some time today to look at the test, so that the children will not be surprised when they see it.  I have explained that tests are not to "trick" students, a test is simply one way to determine what they are learning.

I have seen some improvement with students completing homework and returning it to school, however it continues to be a struggle for some children.  Please check in with your child to see how homework is going. Remembering to pack it is just as important as completing the assignment.  If you are looking for some suggestions on helping with homework, you can find some here.

School hours ~
Our school opens the doors at 8:15 each morning. This allows the children to enter the building, arrive at their classes and unpack before school officially begins at 8:30 AM.  Many of the children are entering our classroom at 8:30 or later.  If the children enter the classroom later than 8:30, they are marked late for school.  Additionally, I begin some type of announcement or discussion after the school wide announcements in the morning.  If your child is arriving at 8:30, taking 5-7 minutes to unpack his/her bag and get settled, he/she is missing some important information for the day.  Often times assignments required at that morning time are not completed, and the day begins with a challenge.  I've been encouraging the children to arrive sometime between 8:15 and 8:25, so that they have ample time to get organized and unpacked before instruction begins.  I realize that this isn't always possible, and that the morning time can be hectic, but I wanted to be sure all families were aware of this.

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

This week is No Name Calling Week! You may have heard this on the news. We talked about name calling earlier this week, specifically about how we feel when someone calls us names. We all agreed that it doesn't feel good to be called names. On Wednesday, we wrote down names either that we've called others, or that we've been called, and we put them in the "Dis-furnace". Thursday we traced our feet and made the pledge to "Stomp out name calling".

In Reading, we began reading Snow Treasure this week. This is a story about Norwegian children during WWII. You can find a summary of this book here. While reading this book, we have been focusing on making connections, writing summaries, and figurative language. The three types of figurative language we have discussed this week are similes, metaphors and onomatopoeia. The children are getting really great at finding these in their reading. We reached a milestone in our reading this week! We have officially finished 534 books. Way to go!!!

We have continued working on writing using the Writer's Workshop model. Our focus has been to write to a specific prompt ~ A favorite memory of a teacher. This week we have worked on revising and editing our work. Here are a couple of our posters which guide us through this process.

In science we took our Weather Maps and Fronts Quiz. The children did very well on this ! Mrs. Williams invited us over to her room today to check out weather.com. NASA has taken some new photographs of Earth. We enjoyed seeing these pictures!

From the Teacher's Desk

This time of year it can be difficult for students to stay focused on school. The days are short, and there is much less time to play outside. One thing you can do to help your child is to continue to encourage him/her to have a consistent place and time for homework, and to provide a reminder to put materials in backpacks. This will help your child with organization and he/she will feel great about being prepared for school every day. Your child's reading book and assignment notebook are two essential items for school. These should be here each day.