Hello 4A Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend.  In Thanksgiving reflection, I am so grateful for all of the kind support I receive from all of you! I’m also thankful for the amazing 4th grade students that I have the pleasure of teaching everyday! I am excited for our upcoming conferences next week!  .

Conferences: Students are busy preparing for conferences next week. Your child will be leading us in prayer, sharing some of their work, and discussing goals for the 2nd trimester. Just to be clear, all students will be attending their conference.  I look forward to meeting with you all as we discuss your child’s progress and goals.

Thank you for returning the Pre-Conference form we sent home last Monday.  If you have misplaced this form, you can print and fill out this digital copy: Pre-Conference Form and send it to school no later than the 16th.  

Thanksgiving Outreach: Thank you so much for sending in donations for our all-school food drive for St. Vincent DePaul in West Seattle. We are encouraging students to find ways to earn money to purchase food to donate. Please help your child with this…think chores around the house or yard, safely helping out neighbors with raking or other tasks, etc. We appreciate your support, and we are excited to continue our tradition of giving!  We would love every student to bring in a few items this week if possible. 

Religion: This week we will be focusing on our Second Step Bullying Prevention lessons on recognizing, reporting and refusing as well as bystander power.  

Reading/Language Arts:Reading: We are thundering (as Lurvy would say) through Charlotte’s Web! This week, we will focus on Chapters 11-14. Students are becoming increasingly more independent in choosing meaningful quotes and writing sentences with context clues. We are also working on improving fluency. The Postcards from the Barn the students created will be displayed in the hallway and shared during their conference.  You will also enjoy reading some selected favorite quotes in speech bubbles around the postcards.

Spelling: The spelling words for Friday, November 17th are in your child’s filer.  This week’s words all have the long “i” sound spelled “i, i-consonant e, y, igh, ey and uy.  

Language Arts/Vocabulary:  We will be doing final preparations for conferences with the students this week.  This includes preparing a self-evaluation and practicing introductions for our upcoming conferences.  We have some final wrap up work on the saint reports as well.

Science: This week, we will be moving onto Unit 2 Waves of Sound. In this lesson, students explore how digital devices encode complex information so that it can be transferred over long distances. In the activity, Secret Snacks, students generate their own codes in order to transfer information across the classroom. Then, they compare their codes and evaluate which worked best given the criteria and constraints.

Social Studies:  The combination NE/SE test will take place on Thursday, the 16th. There are no new states or features to learn. This is a review of the two regions the students have already been tested on so far.  Abbreviations will be provided on the test sheet.  

Math: 4A will be taking the Chapter 3 test on Wednesday.  We will review for the test on Monday and Tuesday. Monday/Tuesday homework will be a test review. We will then move in the next chapter multiplying multi-digit numbers.  

The students are making such great progress on their multiplication and division fact mastery.  They are highly encouraged to read regularly and practice their math facts over the break! 

I look forward to seeing you next week during your conferences.

I also want to wish you all a very Happy Thanksgiving!  I am so thankful for all of my 4th grade families.