Dear 4A Families:
Happy first week of March and second week of Lent.
Thank you for your donations to our Friday Lenten services. This week dollar free dress Fridays continue and our St. Martin de Porres collections are as follows: Friday March 6th:
Last Names A-L: Disposable razors and shaving cream (travel size)
Last Names M-Z: Brown Bag Lunches (perishable OK)
Oral Biographies: The students are very excited about the biography project! They are choosing lots of great people. All students will find out if their choices are approved by the end of week if they haven’t already. Your child will bring home a full direction sheet for the oral biography project by Wednesday this week. If your child has had their choice approved, they should start reading their book. All students should plan on reading their biography at least two times. The second time through there will be some specific suggestions to support their planning and notetaking
Along with going over the Oral Biography project with the students, we are finishing up our mini bios and planning their class presentations. We will introduce PVLEGS—which helps teach students about effective oral presentation skills.
Keyboarding: The 4th graders have begun keyboarding practice during computer lab time. This will help prepare them for 5th grade when they will be using Chromebooks for some of their assignments.
Spelling: Spelling Words for the week were passed out last Friday with a test coming this Friday, March 6th.
Reading: We are starting a new unit beginning with a story called See How They Run, written by Susan Goodman. This story is a narrative nonfiction text that focuses on the themes of democracy, civic responsibility, and the role of government in our country.
Math: We will be finishing up Chapter 6 on Division this week. Students are working hard on mastering the long division process, using DMSB (divide, multiply, subtract, bring down). We will be planning to have the review on Wednesday March 4th, and the test will be on Thursday March 5th, possibly the 6th if we determine an extra review day is needed.
Religion: The students will be tested on the naming of the Seven Sacraments and their categories this Tuesday, March 3rd. All students have study sheets in their filers and we are practicing in class each day as well. I bet most of the students can sing you a song about the sacraments! Here is a blank version of the test as well. Our class work is looking more closely at each of the sacraments. Students should continue to practice the Memorare each night.
Social Studies: Continuing along the trail with Lewis, Clark and Sacagawea. As we travel with the Corps, the students will be experiencing the journey from not only Lewis and Clark’s point of view, but also Sacagawea and even Clark’s slave York. The contributions of the Naive People along the way are also highlighted, recognizing that the expedition would not have been successful without their help.
Science: We will be starting Unit 3: Human Machine. In lesson 1, students discover the mechanism by which their muscles control their bones to move their bodies. In the activity, Robot Finger, students construct a model of a human finger and observe how pulling on a string (a model for tendons) causes it to bend at the joints.
Here’s to a wonderful month of March ahead!
