Week of February 6-10

Dear 4A Families,

Catholic Schools Week was a wonderful celebration. Thank you to all of the parents that drove a group of students to deliver certificates to our local businesses. I have already seen some of them hanging up! Thank you also for the donations for the gift certificate to Mr. Stoefen. He was very happy!

Congratulations to the 4th grade Spelling Bee participants, Liam, Brennan, Livi and the 1-4 Spelling Bee winner, Lauren! All of the students did such a great job.

Mid-tri reports: Mid-tri reports will come home this Thursday, February 9th in an envelope that will be in your child’s filer. Please keep the report, but sign and return the envelope. Thank you so much.

Students should bring their Valentine boxes and cards to school on Tuesday, February 14th. The students will share their Valentine Box creations with the class. I can’t wait to see what the creative 4th grade students come up with! All students were provided with a class list last week they can use to label their Valentines.

Religion: The Liturgical Year Test will take place this Wednesday the 8th. Remember, this is a two part test. The students will fill in a liturgical calendar with a provided word list. They will also need to know the colors of the seasons. The second part of the test includes specific questions about the calendar and seasons. All students have a packet with study sheets for both parts of the test and they also can review for both tests with the online practice sites you will find under the RELIGION tab at the top of the website. You will also find extra study sheets there. We will practice Monday and Tuesday in class this week as well.

Math: The students will be working to learn and apply the algorithm for long division with remainders. They are also learning to interpret the meaning of remainders in story problems. Your support at home checking your child’s work for accuracy is much appreciated and an important step to mastery of this challenging skill. I am having the students write DMSB at the top of their math work as a reminder of the steps.

Reading: We begin a new story this week called Me and Uncle Romie about the artist Romare Bearden.

Language Arts: This week we will begin a smaller writing project (called Mini-Bio) that will lead us into the larger upcoming Oral Biography project. At school each student will receive a mini biography to read. They will be writing a summary of this person’s life, character traits, what they admire and some fun facts to teach about their subject. When they present this project the students will get some practice for the big bio as well, speaking in front of the class as the person they wrote about. You can expect to hear more about the big Oral Biography Project after winter break.

Spelling: There will be a spelling test this Thursday. Words with /k/, /ng/ and /kw/ sounds.

Science: Students will 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.

Social Studies: The 50 state test will take place next Thursday, February 16th. All students received a study packet last Thursday that should be in their filer. I will give the students time during their SS class to practice, but they should plan on practicing at home as well to solidify the locations. Remember, I will provide a list of abbreviations for the students to use for this test. Our classwork continues to focus on Lewis and Clark as they journey West.