Week of April 24-28

Dear 4th Grade Families,

The Bingo Bash was great fun Friday night!  Lots of 4th grade BINGO winners, including the $50 final prize to Daniel!  Thank you all for your support.

Group class pictures will be taken this Tuesday, April 25th.  Students should come in perfect uniform.  Red Holy Rosary sweatshirts or sweaters included.  Thank you!

Oral Biography Presentations: 

We will be starting our Oral Biography presentations this week.  We are looking forward to our first presentations  on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. The reminder of the presentations will take place next Monday, Wednesday and Thursday.  I will provide some final class times in class on Monday and Tuesday to work on the presentations. These will be the final class work times for this project.  Let me know if you have any questions or need anything for the project.  

If you are planning to attend your child’s presentation remember you need to be Safe Environment compliant.  Please sign in at the office.  Thank you.

*Students may wear their costume to school on the day of their presentation, or bring their costume to change into at school prior to their presentation time. If they are presenting on Thursday either week, they should come dressed in their costume as they will be presenting first period.

Last week the students all started their bibliography at school.  They should all have this bibliography form in their filer–and need to complete it before their presentation with the 3 (or more) sources they used on the project.  This include internet sites. I know these can be hard to cite, so just do your best.

Just a reminder that the 4th grade classes have been assigned April to bring in Lunches of Love.  We are asking every student to bring in at least one lunch this month.  Thank you. We have lots more brown bags at school if needed!

Flat Stanley Journals are due May 16th, with a minimum of two new entries completed.  Thank you for helping your child edit, remembering to include figurative language, great word choice, topic and closing sentences.  The writing in the journal should be final draft quality.  Pictures should be included with the entries.  The picture shows the preferred layout of the picture on the back of the previous entry so that you can look at the pictures while reading the corresponding entry.  Let me know if you have any questions, or need help printing pictures.

Spelling:  There will be no spelling test this week to give more time to prepare for the Oral Biographies.  The next spelling test will be May 5th, but we students will have a copy of the spelling words in their filer on Monday the 24th.

Math: This week the students will be learning to add, subtract mixed numbers and multiply fractions by whole numbers.  We will provide some time in class to get HW started this week to give students more time to focus on their big bio presentations. Thank you for checking over the homework with your child and having them talk to you about operations with fractions. We are also including some review work of previous chapters to help prepare the students for the upcoming Spring MAP Tests.

Reading: We are enjoying reading From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler!  Last week we learned of the mystery that Jamie and Claudia will be attempting to uncover.  The students are learning and using complex vocabulary, focusing on character traits and what it means to be a team!  They even learned what an Automat—and they all wished they were still around.

Battle of the Books:  Round 1 of Battle of the Books  will take place during library time on Monday. Those not participating will be supportive audience members!

Religion:  The Beatitudes—understanding what makes us truly happy in life–will be our religion focus.  The students will learn about each Beatitude and how they apply in our daily lives—how treating each other with kindness, forgiveness, compassion and standing up for what we know is right at the elements of life that bring true happiness. 

Science: This week we will be focusing on Lesson 2: Collisions and Energy Transfer. In this lesson, students explore how energy can be stored as height. In the activity, Bumper Coasters (Part I), students build paper roller coasters. Students release marbles down the roller coaster track to understand height energy and energy transfer.

Social Studies: The students will need to be able to name the 6 regions of our state from memory for a test on April 27th. Students will need to have the names of the regions memorized for this test—no word bank will be provided.  All students have study sheets in their filers and we reviewed them in class several times as well. In class we are learning some interesting facts and taking notes on each region.

Enjoy the last full week of April!