Week of January 26th

We are cruising right along and making great progress this year! You should be so proud of your student and how hard they are working, I know I am! This is a great group of kids and I am enjoying my time in class with them each day. :)

IXL Assigned Skills:

The biggest thing that we have going on this week is that those IXL skills  that I have been assigning and using as extra credit will now no longer be extra credit. These are critical skills that I want my students to be practicing and becoming proficient with. Starting this week I will be assigning 4 language arts skills and 4 math skills that tie in to what we are learning in class. Students will have from Monday to Sunday to get those skills completed with an 80 Smart Score. This will be a grade in Infinite Campus and I will link each skill to the assignment in IC to make it easier for my students to find them. I am offering a House Point to students who get each of the assigned skills to a 100 Smart Score for the week! 

ELA:

This week we are starting our new novel study on the book Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing. We will continue to work on our reading comprehension strategies and answering short answer questions as we read this funny book. We will also continue to have a ReadWorks assignment about 1 time per week. This allows us to read a non-fiction text at grade level and answer questions about it. We are going to continue working towards being comfortable with those paired text assignments as well.

We finished up our opinion writing today on "Would you rather be a parrot or an octopus?" Your student created a "podcast" to come up with reasons to support their opinion and examples that supported their reasons. I am really proud of how well they did with this! We are going to move into an Informative Writing next. After that we will have covered all three essay types that your student will learn in 4th grade! We will keep practicing those different writing types as the year goes on so that students are really comfortable with all three types.

Math:

This week we will be finishing up Topic 8 which is our introductory unit for fractions. We will spend this week finishing up Topic 8 and then we will take the Topic 8 Celebration of Learning next week. I am really please with how well my students are doing with fractions! This can be tricky because it is such an abstract concept but I have seen my students really persevere and keep trying! I love that!

Valentine's Day:

It's hard to believe that Valentine's Day is right around the corner! We talked in class a bit about it last week and I reminded my students that in 4th grade we celebrate this holiday as a day of friendship. We do a small Valentine's Party that is mostly students passing out and enjoying their Valentines from each other. If your student would like to bring Valentines, but you are unable to get them any, please let me know and I will provide them! I will send home a list of names for your student today as well as posting it HERE. 

We do not make anything to keep Valentines in here at school. If your student would like to make something at home, that's great! Please do not let them bring it in until Thursday, February 12th because we do not have space to safely store them all and I would hate to see their hard work be damaged accidentally. These do need to be small enough to fit on top of their desks, I know some of these kids are ultra creative, but we just don't have space for anything bigger. :)

On Thursday, February 12th we will have a normal day until the end of the day. Students will take time to pass out their Valentines and we thought it would be fun to watch "Because of Winn Dixie" since we have finished reading it and it is a story all about friendship! It is rated PG so if you do NOT want your student to watch it, please let me know and I will provide an alternative activity for them to do during that time. If students would like to bring a healthy treat to share with the class, they are welcome to! Since so many Valentines come with candy, and I know the kids are going to want to enjoy some of that, I would prefer non sugary treats be brought in. :)