As we fall into the colder weather please make sure that your child has warm clothes for recess. In our classroom it is hard to know what to wear since it is either very hot or very cold in the room. having your child wear layers is the best way to survive the changing temperatures both inside and outside. I would like to reccomend that girls not wear sandals anymore since they cannot wear them at recess or PE. Having a coat, hat, and mittens for recess would be great!
This week we worked very hard on learning common and proper nouns in grammar. We worked on comparing and contrasting our reading stories and making sure that we understood the author's purpose. The children had to make inferences to understand what the authors purpose was.
In writing we worked on understanding what a topic sentence is and how to write one. Mrs. Christenson has been coming in to teach writing with us. We are gearing the children up to write an opinion piece.
In math we have been working on learning place value, and how to convert decimals to fractions and vice versa. We also worked on ordering decimals from smallest to largest. We have two children who are still in the 5 minute addition club. Our goal is that by next Friday all children have moved into the subtraction club. Please have your child work on learning their basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts! The majority of 4th graders are not fluent in their math facts. That is a fundamental foundation for all we learn in math this year.
In Social Studies we took the NE region states and capital test. The results will be sent home sometime next week. We will be finishing the Progressive Era next week. To celebrate our completion of the unit all 4th graders will be watching the Disney movie The Newsies on Oct. 26th. We are working on having a movie theatre donate popcorn to the kids and then I will allow the kids to bring in a special drink of their choice. More information will come as the event gets closer.
We have finished the rock and mineral unit in science and the kids have been focusing on test taking strategies until the next science kit comes.
Thank you to Olivia and Zoe D. for donating class pets to the room. We are now the proud "parents" to a tadpole and a gecko. Several kids have asked about bringing in other animals for pets. At this time I think we have enough pets in the room. I would like to save those "special" pets like snakes and spiders for Mr. Bergert and the 5th grade. :)
Please continue to work on homework completion with your child. They need to know that they have responsibilities they must uphold.
