Week of February 12th

 We have a busy next couple of weeks in 4th grade! Please make sure you are reading carefully through this blog so that you are up to date. 

ELA:

This is a week with NO Morning Warm-Up quiz. Students will have a grade in the grade book based on completion and correcting their daily work accurately. We DO have a spelling test on List S on Thursday. 

January Reading Calendars were due 2 weeks ago. If your student hasn't gotten that turned in, please help them remember to turn that in. An email from you letting me know the total number of minutes read for January works as well. 

Math:

We took a quiz on Topic 8 last week. Over all my students did great on that quiz! We are moving into Topic 9 this week which deals with adding and subtracting fractions. Their homework will be on those skills as well. Please remind them to work on the assigned skills at home and not other, easier 4th-grade skills. There will NOT be a Math 4 Today quiz this week. They will get a daily work grade for completion as well as correctly correcting their daily work. 

Social Studies:

Because we will be doing Wagons Ho! next week, we are going to jump ahead to our Oregon Trail unit before we continue working on our Native American research project. That way students will have a better foundational understanding of those events before we do Wagons Ho! which will hopefully make that day a little more meaningful. 

Wagons Ho! will take place on Tuesday, February 20th and it is an all-day event. I do have the parent volunteers needed, but if you would like to be on my back up list, please email me and let me know.  Students will need to bring the following:

*a water bottle

*a bundle of wood

*a large 2 or 4 hole button

*be dressed appropriately for the weather including a hood or hat (Western Wear is optional)

*pictures of artifacts or family brands

NAEP Testing:

Students brought home letters about NAEP testing mid January. This is a federal mandate that we are required to comply with. It is a random selection of students from each class. Our class will be testing tomorrow starting at 8:15. Those students not selected for the NAEP testing will be working in class on updating diagnostic scores on IXL. 

Valentines Day:

We will celebrate Valentine's Day on Wednesday, February 14th. This party is different than our other parties as it mostly consists of passing out valentines and then reading them. Students are welcome to create a box at home to collect their valentines from classmates. They do not have to though. I will have a basket for students to collect their Valentines in and then a grocery sack for students to take them home in, it isn't fancy but it will do the trick. :)

I posted our class list in the virtual classroom and you can click on that from the whiteboard or click HERE. Bringing valentines is optional! Your student is not required to bring any. However, if they do, please have them bring one for every student or one for every boy or every girl. That way no one has hurt feelings. :) This is a day that we focus on love and friendship. We don't worry about boyfriends and girlfriends in 4th grade so please remind your student of that as well. :)

We will also be watching Because of Winn Dixie on this day. It is a great story that celebrates friendship and family. We will compare and contrast it to the book as well. This movie is rated PG. If you do NOT want your student to watch the movie, please email me and let me know and I will provide an alternate activity for them to do during that time. If you would like to send in HEALTHY snacks like fruits, veggies, meat and cheese trays, etc. that would be great! Please no cookies or anything like that since they will have candy from their Valentines. 

We did a quick writing activity for Valentine's Day last week where we talked about character attributes that are admirable rather than physical attributes. We have been discussing Dr. Martin Luther King a lot this month and we discussed his "I Have a Dream" speech and how he wanted his kids to be judged by the "content of their character". We brainstormed things that would make good character content and wrote all of those ideas on the board. Students then got a heart with a classmate's name on it that said "I love ___ a latte because ___." and they wrote something they loved about that classmate. It was a lot of fun and I was so impressed with some of the things they came up with. I also wrote one for each student and put those on our bulletin board as well. I will include a couple of pictures for you to see. Be proud of your kiddo, I know that I am!