Week of September 21-25

Dear 4A Families,

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Our first full week was truly inspiring. I am in awe of the students’ hard work, and adaptability every day!

A Message from Ms. Mudge:

HRS will process an order for the Yamaha brand soprano recorders for (for online music classes) asap so they can arrive in time for the Oct 2/3 materials pick-up.  Your child has submitted their color choice to their homeroom teacher. Your FACTS account will be charged for the cost of the recorder, which will be $5.00.  If you are unable to cover this cost at this time, support is available.  Please contact the school office to discuss this further.  Ms. Mudge

As we begin our third week of school the students are building an understanding of our remote classroom rules and procedures. We will continue to practice and review.  Every student in our class has a right to learn and work without interruption and enjoy school. The management plan is in place to insure that every student in our class feels safe, included, and is able to work and learn without disruption. Our classroom and school rules are based on being SAFE, RESPECTFUL AND RESPONSIBLE.

When rules are not followed students receive (in the order):

  • A reminder
  • A move to the waiting room
  • An individual conference (in a breakout room) and parent contact

Our goal is always to help students be responsible, respectful self-managers. Each new day is a new beginning. The less time we have to spend managing behavior—the more time we have for great learning! I will be holding students to high academic, behavioral, and social expectations. Thank you for your support.

This is a friendly reminder to remind your children to log in to their homeroom every morning at 8:25. We will start class at 8:30 sharp every day! Afternoon classes begin at 12:30, so students should start logging back in at 12:25. Thank you for your support!

Schedule Change for this week:

On Wednesday, September 23rd, students will log off of zoom at 1:20. They will be given a reading project to complete independently for the rest of the afternoon (until 2:30).

2nd Step:  Our 2nd step lessons this week will focus on Empathy, Respect, and Listening with Attention.  Empathy is a crucial foundation for healthy communication and interpersonal relationships.  Listening with attention is a skill necessary for effective communication with others and academic success—and especially important as we navigate Zoom/Remote learning.  We will also be discussing Cyber Bullying as we complete our Bullying Prevention Unit in Second Step.  These lessons, and the strategies to recognize, refuse and report bullying will be revisited throughout the year. Finally,  Fr. Oakland will be visiting both classes this week!

Religion/Language Arts: We will be starting our study of saints in preparation for our saint reports and the All Saint’s Day Mass on October 28th.  Each student will be assigned the saint that they will write their report on as well as portray during the Mass. Our next pick up days will be October 2nd and 3rd.  To facilitate this project, we will need to compile the materials to send home for the students to start the project.  This is a big project to organize, so we need to get started soon. Following is our system for determining which saint each student will have:

We have amassed a large collection of student friendly saint biography information on many amazing saints.  When in the classroom we randomly passed out saints to each student, which works well.  We do try to match students with their names if we have that saint. If there is a saint that has special meaning to your family that you would like us to consider, we ask that you email us this request no later than  Wednesday, September 23rd.  If we do not hear from you will assume that you trust us to make a great selection for your child. 🙂

Language Arts:  I have been enjoying reading the My Favorite Place writing the students completed last week.  These pieces are used as a beginning of the year writing assessment that I will reference to help me plan our upcoming lessons. The writing is also a good benchmark for the students to compare their progress as they grow as writers this year. I will be leaving a voice comment for each student about their Favorite Place writing on Seesaw.  Our class work this week will focus on grammar and punctuation and cursive!

Social Studies:  The continent and ocean test will take place this Thursday the 24th. We will continue to review in class, and students are expected to practice at home as well. The test will have a word bank of the continents and oceans. Students need to know the locations. The 4A website has links to review the continents as well. Look under the “Map Skills” section on the right-hand links column. I will share these links with the students this week. The 4th graders are also memorizing the Continent poem which located in the Continents and Oceans packet and is available as a PDF in Google Classroom and on the 4A Website. I will give practice time in class for this, but the poem should be practiced at home as well. Our lessons will focus on latitude and longitude as we gain skills reading maps using coordinates.

ScienceWe will be continuing our Project Lead the Way (PLTW) module this week! This module is called: Input/Output: The Human Brain. Through various activities, students will explore the brain with a culminating project where students will create a video or podcast highlighting concussion awareness. We are starting with the research phase this week, where students will find out all about the nervous system. You can access the entire module online! Here’s how:

Go to my.pltw.org Type in–Username: Gators2020    Password: Gators4142!

Reading:This week we continue with our study of Folk/Tall Tales and figurative language. On Wednesday the students will be excused from our live Zoom meeting at 1:20.  Ms. Benson, Ms. Corrigan and I will be using this extra time preparing for the upcoming pick up.  The students will have an activity related to our reading lessons on figurative language to complete during the reading time.  Ask your child about some of the words we’ve been studying with “Stormalong”:  hyperbole, foaming, outcast, yearning, horrified, betray, condition, memorable, seafaring, shortage, tidal, character traits, tall tale.

Spelling: The words this week go with our reading lesson on “Stormalong”.The words are homophones, so the students will need to be able to both spell and explain the meaning of each word. Word lists can be accessed on Google Classroom and the 4th grade websites. The test will be during LA time on Friday, September 25th.  This week I will give the test orally, and students will write the words on lined paper.  There will only be vocabulary test of these words on Spelling City.

Math: Our classwork will continue to focus on place value. Fourth grade students are expected to be able to read and write numbers into the millions and higher. Since there is no official math homework related to the new concepts each day, it is imperative that students make the most of their learning time on zoom.

Multiplication Mastery: Mastery of both multiplication and division facts is important as a 4th grade student. For practice I highly encourage flash cards as well as paper/pencil tests. When using flash cards the students should say the entire fact: “Six times three is eighteen”, rather than just, “eighteen”. Some students respond well to online practice.  There are many sites (some better than others) that can help students master facts. If you have not yet enrolled in Xtra Math from the flyer that was sent home in the password packet please do so by Monday, September 21st at the latest.

We will focus this week on the habit of perseverance. We will be studying the synonyms for this word: tenacity, persistence, determination…what else?

GATOR STRONG!

Thank you for your support of the Magazine Sale!  

Have an excellent week everyone!