Week of August 24th

It is hard to believe we are already into the 3rd week of this school year! We have finished up with our first two weeks where we are really working on procedures and expectations while reviewing 3rd grade concepts. This class is amazing and did so well we got through more than I expected! 

Reading/Writing:

This week we will begin our first novel study, Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing. It is a funny story and students every year love it! We will use this to work on our reading comprehension as well as vocabulary. 

We also started learning about narrative essays today. In 4th grade students will learn to write three essay types: narrative, opinion, and informative. At the end of the year I would like to see my students writing 5 paragraph essays and today we discussed how that is our goal. 

Math: 

Today we will start our first lesson through our math curriculum which is Savaas Realize. Students will access the assignment online and their score on that part will make up half each assignment grade. They other half of that grade comes from showing their work. It is the expectation from here on out at Vision Charter School that students show their work in math. Each assignment is work 10 points total. So if a student gets an 80% on the online portion that is 4 points of their total, if they show their work for the whole assignment (even the problems they got wrong) they get 5 points for that part which gives them a 9/10 on the assignment. Tests and quizzes are graded the same. 

Homework Expectations:

Students at Vision Charter are required to read as homework per our charter. That is where the monthly reading calendars come from. In 4th grade students also need to master their multiplication facts so I have made this part of their homework as well. However, once they have mastered them, I will send home a certificate of completion and it is  NOT homework anymore! They will start bringing this home today. It is just a half sheet of paper that you will initial next to the day they practices their multiplication facts. This will be worth 5 points per week, one point per day. 

These are the only two things your student will have as consistent homework. The only other homework they may have is if they do not complete work in class. That work will need to be finished at home. I always allow plenty of time for students to get work done in class and if they are on task and working hard, they should be able to get it done and not have extra homework. 

Infinite Campus:

If you have not yet logged in to your Parent Portal on Infinite Campus, you will need to do that ASAP. Please contact Mrs. Welch at biancawelch@visioncsd.org to get that set up. I teach my students how to find their missing assignments in Infinite Campus and how to check their grades. Each Thursday morning I ask them to do a grade check and write their grades down in the Friday column of their agenda. You can download the IC Parent Portal app to your phone and it will update you every time I enter something in my gradebook for your student. I have it for my own kids and I LOVE it. I would not be able to keep up with their grades otherwise. 

I also use Google Classroom for my students to access anything we do online. This eliminates the need for logins and passwords for a lot of the sites we use. I do NOT update grades as missing or turned in in the Google Class. It is just a platform I use to make things easier on my students. If your student has an assignment marked missing in Infinite Campus, I will include the link in that assignment for them to be able to access whatever they need. 

IXL:

In 4th grade we use IXL to help reinforce concepts we are learning in class. So I will assign 4 skills for Language Arts and 4 skills for Math that go along with what we are learning in class. These will be assigned Monday morning and students have until Thursday afternoon to get them to an 80 Smart Score or higher to participate in Thirsty Thursday. This won't start until next week. If your student is on an IEP, I ask that they still do the assigned IXL skills but only require them to get to a 60 instead of an 80. If you have any questions about this, please don't hesitate to reach out to me! 

Picture Day:

Picture day is Wednesday, the 26th and we are scheduled for 9 am. This schedule usually changes depending on how quickly they are able to get through the younger grade levels. I sent home the picture packet last week and you can use that to order pictures by either sending in money with the envelope or ordering online.