10/4/15

Dear Families of 4-D,

We are off to a great start. I cannot believe it is October already. In class 4D, we have established our classroom routines, and the students are becoming more comfortable with the new subject areas in 4th grade. During the past few weeks, we have learned a lot about each other and introduced goals and expectations for our class.

Homework is a natural extension of concepts learned in school, and we have eased into our daily homework nicely. Every week the students receive a new spelling packet that will be due on Thursday. With the Sitton Spelling Program, students are responsible for learning high-frequency words, which are often seen and used in written language. Each unit contains five “core” words. Some words will appear to be quite easy, but they may be used to study spelling patterns, proofreadingskills, sentence formation, homophones, synonyms, antonyms, idioms, and affixes. Tests are nontraditional; students are asked to complete a “cloze” story test as the teacher reads the story in its entirety. During the week, we work on skill work and sentence dictations. We’ve talked about frequent spelling patterns for long vowel sounds for O, I and E, frequent spelling patterns for the/K/ sound such as qu, ck, ca, k, co , cu, ch, cl , cr, and identifying words with digraphs (ch, sh, th, wh, and ph).

In the back of your child’s word study notebook you will findwords to learn. This is a list of spelling words your child has not yet mastered. I will continue to add to the list as we continue our units of study. Please help your child study these words at home to master them. Please sign and return your child’s cloze test each week.

The “Finish It” assignments that you have seen at home are part of our Sitton Program, which invites the students to use their imagination to create a conclusion to an open-ended idea. Then they write about it and proofread their work. I’m looking forward to seeing progress in their writing, as they learn how to edit their entry. Sometimes I will choose to assign nightly writing assignments from our Writer’s Workshopmini-lessons in place of the weekly “Finish It” homework.

We have launched our Writer’s Workshop and have discussed, “What goes into a Writer’s Notebook?” Some of our mini lessons in class this month include the following ideas:

  • Beautiful Language/ Writing you Admire
  • Memories
  • Bits of Conversation
  • Authority List
  • Mind Pictures/Sensory Observations
  • Wonderings about the World
  • Special People
  • Strong Feelings
  • Special Things
  • Buried Stories
  • Special People
  • Poems
  • Songs

We will continue to write and collect ideas in our Writer’s Notebook. Students willthen select a “seed” idea and take this piece through the writing process (draft, revise, edit, publish). This month we will read mentor texts to emulate other authors’ crafts and characteristics of a good personal narrative.

Our class has been doing a great job recording their reading logs. We will use the reading logs to learn more about ourselves as readers. We will examine our own reading stamina (number of pages read, number of days it takes to complete a book). We will also look at the kind of genres we are reading. I will continue to work with small groups of students to discuss their books, their goals, and how to choose a “just right” book. I am very pleased to see the books coming back and forth from home to school.

We will finish our class read aloud, Marshfield Dreams, by Ralph Fletcher early this week. The class really enjoyed his memoir. We will use parts of this text to refer to, as we write our personal narratives.

We are finishing unit 2 of Wordly Wise this week. Each week the students learn 15 new vocabulary words and practice extensive work to understand the words, including illustrating each word to portray its meaning. The class has been doing a great job completing the different activities each night. Activity E (reading the passage and answering questions) is lengthy, so I suggested to the class to get a head start over the weekend. Of course, this is optional. This activity will be due every other Tuesday. We had our first Wordly Wise test a few weeks ago. Please continue to sign these tests and have your child return it back to school. This is our way of communicating that you saw your child’s test, so we can be in sync with your child’s progress. Please note on my webpage, I have the Wordly Wise website and quizlet to help your child study for each unit. Under the quizlet you will need to search “Wordly Wise book 4”, then click on the lesson we are working on. Thank you so much for your cooperation.

We have almost completed our first round of Current Events. Each student presents about one time per month. I showed our class the current event resources on my webpage. This will help them choose a website to find an article. We are learning so much from our presenters!

In science, we have been working with Mrs. Gray learning about living versus nonliving things. We went on a discovery walk and charted what we thought was living and nonliving.

  • We learned the 6 characteristics needed to characterize a living thing. (Living things grow, take in nutrients, breathe, reproduce, eliminate waste, and die)
  • How do living and non-living things interact?
  • Defined: ecosystem: - a place where living and non-living things are interacting in order to function and survive. For example, it can be the entire forest or just a fallen tree, as long as living and non-living things are interacting. It can be large or small.
  • Producers versus consumers
  • Photosynthesis: Sunlight + Water + Carbon Dioxide  Glucose (sugar) + Oxygen

We will continue to learn about ecosystems and we will witness these interactions as our terrarium and aquarium are being set up in our classroom. Our class trip to Sheldrake will support our unit of study.

In Math, we have been working on unit 1 Whole Numbers. We have completed the following studies:

  • Ten Thousands, Hundred Thousands and Millions place value (standard versus expanded form)
  • Approximation
  • Factors

For the upcoming weeks, we will continue to learn multiples and order of operations to complete the unit. I have been giving the students assessments to monitor their progress at the end of each chapter. As we approach the unit 1 assessment, each student should know the areas they will need to focus on. It is very important that each child practices his/her math facts. Mrs. El-Chehabi pushes in on E days to help our class with multiplication facts. We’ve had 2 timed multiplication assessments and each student graphs the number of multiplication problems thatare correct out of 90 problems. We are teaching the class to monitor their own progress. It is important that each child practices these facts at home. Mrs. El-Chehabi showed the class her webpage to play interactive fact games. They also have Math Magician available on my webpage. Learning their math facts will help tremendously with our units of study this year (and beyond).

Last, we will begin on our Social Studies unit on explorers the week of Columbus Day.

Thank you so much for your support. Our communication is key to your child’s learning success. I look forward to watching each child grow and be successful this year.

REMINDERS/SUGGESTIONS:

  • Snack and water everyday
  • Sneakers for P.E. (The grass is wet, so feel free to pack extra shoes to keep in your child’s locker)
  • Scholastic Book Order info is on my webpage (I usually have the due date around the 25th of the month).
  • Sheldrake and music field trip permission forms due
  • I will write a monthly newsletter to keep you posted about our activities.

Warmly,

Lisa DeGrazia