Week of September 2nd

 I hope you all had a lovely long weekend! I spent time camping with my family and celebrating birthdays! I am excited to get back to school this week because now we have most of the kinks worked out and things will really take off from here. 

I know Infinite Campus had some updates and all things technology can be counted on to change regularly, if your student is struggling to access something for school, please let me know and I will help you troubleshoot. Eventually the kiddos will have it all figured out and things will be really smooth. Thank you for your patience as we are all learning together in the beginning. :)

Grade Checks:

Part of our Thursday morning routines is to do a grade check and write down any missing assignments. We do this in the "Friday" part of our agenda. Your student should have crossed off "Friday" and written "Grade Check" underneath. They should include the letter grade as well as percentage for each subject. Underneath that they should write down any missing assignments if they have any. Right now they should only have grades in Math and ELA. I will include a picture of what my model agenda looked like from our grade check last Thursday below. 

Math: 

This week in math we are continuing to work on understanding place value. We will also be taking the Interim Math ISAT this week. This helps guide my instruction as well as help my students set goals for their learning this year. 

Keep helping them work on their multiplication facts at home. I have already seen so much growth with my students and it is AMAZING!! One of the things we do in class each day is sing the Multiplication Mash Up. Someone took fun catchy songs and put them to the multiples. It is an excellent way to make it fun and help them remember their math facts. You can find that by clicking on the numbers above the white board in my virtual class. You can also click HERE to find it. 

ELA:

English Language Arts is the broad term we use to cover grammar, reading, writing, morphemes, etc. There is only one ELA grade in Infinite Campus so students will only have one grade to write down for their Grade Check, but they will write missing assignments in the appropriate square. 

This week we are taking the practice ELA ISAT as well. We are also going to begin our work on morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest word chunk that have meaning. They are also the reason that the English language "doesn't make sense". :) For example plumber has a 'b' because it is made up of two morphemes plumb+er. "Plumb" is a Latin root that cannot stand on it's own and means "lead"; "-er" is a suffix we add to words to create a noun. So it literally means "a person who leads or works with leads". 

We do not do spelling lists in 4th grades because our focus is on the morphemes. Once students know the morphemes it will help improve their spelling, but also help improve their vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. 

House App and House Wednesdays:

Your student should be bringing home a letter that has a specific code for you to link to them in the RCA House App. You will get notified when your student earns a house point as well as be able to track their house progress in the competitions! I am hoping to get those out today or tomorrow. 

Your student is encouraged to wear their house color on Wednesdays! I love the sense of community and belonging that happens when students see other students in their house colors!

Fall Festival:

Our school Fall Festival is coming up! You won't want to miss out on the fun! I am including the flyer below that has all the details! I would encourage you to follow the Vision Charter School Social Media pages on Instagram and Facebook if you have them, there is a lot of information posted there. :)