Dear 4A Families,
Happy Spring! I hope you all had a great weekend. The teacher inservice last Friday was prayerful and inspiring. We have a wonderful week of learning ahead in 4th grade.
Lent/Religion: Thank you for your generous contributions to St. Martin de Porres, the Rice Bowl and our local food drive. This week the collections are as follows:
Fri. March 25
Gr. K-4: brown bag lunches
Gr. 5-8: men’s socks
Our classwork will continue to focus on the Ten Commandments. The students will need to be able to correctly fill in missing words from each commandment. The students have a blue study sheet in their filer to use for practice. Just a reminder that all students need to be able to recite the Memorare from memory by April 13th
Language Arts: The students have been working hard on their “Mini Bio” poster projects. I am so proud of the great writing they are doing. This week each student will share a one minute presentation that will give them a chance to practice what it will be like when they present their “big bio” project in May. They learn about the components of effective oral communication: poise, voice, life, eye contact, gestures and speed and practice each of these during the brief presentations.
Oral Biography Project: Early this week the students will come home with full directions for this project. We will go over these directions in depth in class prior to sending them home. Have your child share this information with you at home! We have included a suggested timeline to help keep the students on track for the next two months of preparation.
Flat Stanley: Hopefully the students have been working on their two Flat Stanley entries for March! We are looking for great word choice, figurative language and lots of fun details!
Spelling: The spelling words this week all have silent consonants. The test will be Friday the 25th.
Reading: We will continue reading From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. As we discuss each chapter, students learn to write a concise summary of the main events, including only the most important details. We also review key vocabulary words and keep a booklet that contains sentences, definitions, synonyms, antonyms, etc. for those key words.
Social Studies: The students will be introduced to the 5 regions of Washington State this week. We will focus on the geography, major industries, and populations of each region.
Science: Students are faced with the engineering problems of protecting a house from a landslide and preventing a landslide from happening. They use a brainstorming technique to design creative solutions. Later this week, we begin a new unit on sound, vibration and engineering. Fourth graders will learn about the connection between sounds & vibration. In the activity, “paper cup telephone”, students make telephones using cups and string. Students then modify the design of their telephones using different types of supplies to see if they can improve the sound quality.
Math: Students are becoming more familiar with identifying prime and composite numbers. They continue to review factors and multiples. This week, students work with equivalent fractions using the terms: numerator (number on top of a fraction) and denominator (number on bottom of a fraction), and simplest form. As you know reducing fractions to simplest form involves multiplication and division! Keep up on that fact practice.
Have a wonderful week everyone. Thank you for all you do!
