Dear 4A Families,
Happy Valentine’s Day. I am excited to see the Valentine boxes the students have created. Be sure they bring in not only their boxes and valentines, but also the grid paper with the various views of the box plotted out and labeled. Thank you to our room mom Claudia Augello and Lexi for putting together party bags for our party on Monday.
This week’s newsletter will cover both this week and next.
Language Arts: All of the students will be coming home with a special Flat Stanley folder that will contain their laminated Flat Person, directions for the Flat Stanley writing project, rough draft and final draft papers to complete their first at home journal entry by Monday, February 28th. We will have gone over the entire project in depth at school, and the students will have created the introductory journal entry as well. The full directions for the project are in the folder, and your child should go over them with you. Copies of the directions and extra writing paper will be available on Google Classroom and the website.
Spelling: There will not be a spelling test this week. Students will receive the spelling list on Monday for the test that will take place on February 25th.
Social Studies: The students will be taking their 50 State test on Monday. I will have the tests graded and ready to come home on Tuesday. Next week the students will be working through a QR Code activity in class that will provide them with excellent background information on the Oregon Trail. This background work will provide a foundation for our Oregon Trail unit.
This week fourth graders will read the biography story, Sacagawea & Native American Poetry.
Our target comprehension skill is: main ideas & details, learning to determine what is most important in a selection. Students also study text structure. As we read, students annotate notes–journal style–as did Lewis and Clark. We use diagrams, color, images and text features to list only the main ideas and most important details in the notes.Students continue to learn about figurative language: onomatopoeia. We find several examples of this in our story this week. We also discuss synonyms and the “shades of meaning” that several synonyms might have. For example, “hot, warm & blistering” mean relatively the same thing, but each would be used for varying degrees of intensity.
Math: Keep up regular multiplication and division fact practice–over the winter break as well especially if those facts are not mastered. Thank you for your continued assistance helping your children work for accuracy on their homework as we master the long division algorithm. Our class lessons will remain focused on long division and interpreting remainders in story problems. We will also include some review of double digit multiplication.
Religion: The students are learning about the Sacraments. All students will need to be able to name from memory the Seven Sacraments and the categories of each sacrament for a test Friday the 25th. (This is a date change) Study sheets are in their filers.
Enjoy the President’s Day Weekend/ Winter Break.