September 2010

September 24th, 2010

Dear Families,

Hello and Happy Fall! This week we continued to work on classroom routines, and we have been digging deeper into all content areas. The class has really come together as a community and I have already seen them grow in many ways. We had a successful curriculum night on Monday, if you were unable to attend, your student should have brought home a packet of information on the classroom for the year. Our class goal for next week is to focus on quiet signals and showing good listening, these are two of the procedures that are challenging for us as a class. There has already been a lot of improvement, and I am confident that we will meet our goal!

Some things we have been working on this week:

Reading: Students have officially started writing to me in their response journals. In addition to thinking and writing about our reading, we are working on proper letter format and proofreading our writing. It is a great exercise in writing and thinking about reading, as well as being a great way for the students and I to connect personally. All students will have turned in one reading response this week and should have received a response back from me.

Writing: We are continuing to work on strategies to think of things to write about in our Writer’s Notebooks. This week students looked into their hearts and created a heart map, they also made lists of their best and worst memories. All of these exercises will help us write thoughtfully in our journals. Students will be developing these “seed ideas” when we start looking at memoirs in the coming weeks.

Math: The Bridges program is going strong, and all of the students are truly enjoying the work they are doing. We are working on multiplication and division strategies using area models. Students have been using toolkits in class which contain lots of different manipulatives to help aid their understanding of the concepts. Coming home this week for homework are two more home connections. They involve multiplication and division story problems, and they are a review of what we did in class this week.

Science/Social Studies: Students were introduced to the Geography Mapping Unit today. A packet of information is coming home with your fourth grader. This is a four month unit-each month focusing on a different map feature. For this month, students are studying Natural Landmarks of North America. They will study the maps at home all week, and take a test on Friday. If they pass the test, they receive a prize! The websites on the sheets I sent home are really helpful for studying geography.

We will be starting our Human Body Unit next week!

NECAP testing will be starting October 5th. I will be doing some test prep in the classroom next week. You may see some materials come home.

We also had some parents sign up for volunteering in the classroom. If you were not at curriculum night and would like to get involved in the classroom send me an email and we will be able to work something out! There are lots of opportunities to get involved; clerical work, decorating, chaperoning field trips, fluency work with students, and writer’s workshop support. We are also looking for a PTO rep for the Endeavor team; if that is something you are interested I can put you in contact with Alice Brown.

Additionally, we have some really nice cushions in the classroom that Mrs. Crowther brought back from Thailand. The students get to sit on the cushions when it is their share day, and they really enjoy them. The cushions have some wear and tear and have started leaking stuffing all over the classroom! If anybody has some sewing skills and would be willing to come in and sew the cushions for us that would be greatly appreciated! Send me an email if you think you might be interested.

Coming up:
Tuesday 9/28 is a half day
Wednesday 9/29 is picture day
Thursday 9/30 is Fire Safety Day

Have a wonderful weekend!
Katie