Sep 22-Oct 3rd Update

Thank you to all 4E parents! We had 100% participation and attendance at Student Led Conferences. I was a proud and happy teacher to watch students share their thoughts and ideas for their yearlong goals. I also received a lot of wonderful feedback from you about ways to help make the classroom run more smoothly.

A few things we have implemented due to your feedback:

•   Homework: All Students need to show their planner to a teacher upon leaving the class at the end of the day and need to have it signed by a parent at night. If your child is taking a picture with their ipad, this is fine but their planner still needs to be signed.
•  In the Math section, I will be listing specific Khan Academy skills students should be working on mastering.
• Literacy Letter Guidelines is added to every student’s Literacy Folder so you and they can always check to see what their literacy letter assignment is.

Please continue to contact Ms. Lauren (slauren@aisch.org) and myself (tchristina@aisch.org) if you have any questions, comments or would like to schedule some additional time to meet.

Announcements:

Thankfully, this is the last week with MAP testing.  The data we get is important and useful, but it sure does take up a lot of time! 

Tuesday, October 30; 1:30 pm: Science MAP Test

Wednesday, October 1st; 8:45-9:30: India Month Assembly

Thursday, October 2^nd: No School

Math:

With MAP testing, a day off, and the India Week Assembly, we are losing a lot of valuable instructional/class time this week!  For math, this will be a week where we deepen understanding and assess students on the following objectives:

·                Using drawings and manipulatives to show understanding of place value.

·                Comparing the values of numbers up to ten million.

·                Reading and writing numbers in standard and expanded form up to a ten million. 

Student can practice these skills on Khan Academy. There are four skills, I would like all students to begin exploring and hopefully master this week:

·       Place Value

·       Understanding Place Value

·       Understanding Whole Number Representatives

·       Rounding Whole Numbers

Reading Workshop

In reading, students should be developing detailed theories about the characters in their books and using evidence from the books to support their thinking.  We are encouraging students to take notes in their reading notebooks and to practice different skills very explicitly.

Reading Logs:

We continue to push students to read as much as possible, hoping that they are falling in love with books and applying the skills we are learning both in class and at home.  For the next two weeks, students will be expected to log their reading in a Reading Log and write two notes using reading strategies (Connect, Infer, Predict, Question).  At the end of next week, we will have a lesson about how to use our own logs to reflect on how our reading lives are going.  

This Week:

We will begin reading the novel  Rickshaw Girl which is a book that we use extensively in social studies.  It’s a book that reveals a great deal about life in Bangladesh.  It’s also a great book for our character studies. This week, we will look into analyzing our characters by:

·                Examining different, important objects in their lives.

·                Examining how secondary characters in the story treat the main characters and making inferences about the characters based on these observations

Literacy Letters:

We continue to use the Literacy Letters as a way to examine how students are doing with their “thinking work” in reading.  Last week, we modeled a literacy letter for the students in class, and gave them time to work, which really seemed to help a lot.  Please ask your child about their letter and response from their teacher but do not write your child’s letter. We want to see student thoughts, spelling, grammar, etc. We use this letter to help assess where to continue personalized instruction.

Writing Workshop:  The Arc of the Story

 Students continue to work on their realistic fiction stories.  This week we will have to important lessons where students will:

·                Brainstorm possible endings and plan a powerful ending for their stories.

·                Begin the revision process.

Social Studies:

We are still beginning our social studies unit!  This week, students will work collaboratively on a Google Presentation. This presentation will be great way for students to learn all of the landform vocabulary and begin to explore where these landforms are in South Asia.

Students will:

·                Reflect on the reasons that South Asia is an important region filled with many geographical wonders.

·                Define important landforms in South Asia including: mountain range, mountain pass, river system, tributary, delta, plateau, bay, mangrove forest, and peninsula.

·                Learn important search skills by researching landforms.

·                Identify the important landforms inside of South Asia.

·                Work collaboratively to create a Google Presentation, which includes the important landforms in South Asia.

Personalized Learning

All people have interests and passions; a huge goal I have as a teacher is to help students uncover their passions and help them to explore and learn through them.  This year, students will be expected to identify something they want to explore and complete a project on it.  On Friday, I will introduce these “Passion Projects” to students and give them a handout to help them brainstorm what they might like to do.  Since no one knows the students better than their parents, students will bring this document home over the weekend.   It is my hope that parents will discuss ideas with their children and encourage them to really “dream big” for their Passion Projects.  

Sep 21st Update

Announcements:

·       Tuesday, September 23rd at 8:45 a.m. Language Usage

·       Wednesday, September 24th at 8:45 a.m. Math

·       Tuesday September 30th at 1:30 pm Science

·       Student Led Conferences: Thursday 3:45-6:30

·       No School Friday: Student Led Conferences 8:30am-4:30pm

Our new co-teacher:

Lauren Schneider has been officially hired as the 4A co-teacher.  Lauren's job description includes specific work with EAL students, but she will be working with all students in many different ways this year.  Lauren is in our room during language arts daily, and also in our room for two other blocks during the week.  We are so excited she is working with us!

Goal Setting:

Student led conferences are this week.  As stated in the Principal Notes, it is more of a goal-setting conference and a time to look at the base line data.  
This week, students will spend time developing ideas for goals for the year.  Specifically, students will set one personal goal and one academic goal.  (It is important to note that students are encouraged to set goals in all of the subjects.  These "big goals" will just be two that are followed and documented closely by both teachers and students.)  

Please read below to learn about what is happening in our units of study this week:

Reading:

With the MAP tests and conferences, we will have limited language arts blocks this week. We will finish the read-aloud The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane and explore a number of picture books such as The Sandwich Swap and Thundercake.

We will use these books as mentor texts so that, independently, students will:

·                Identify details in stories and determining their importance.

·                Grow and revise theories about characters.

We hope to emphasize student’s role as a deep reader, going deep into stories to discover author’s purpose and uncovering themes.

Writing:

Students will continue to work on their realistic fiction stories.  We encourage students to work on their stories at home and talk to their families about the creative work they are doing. This week, they will work to:

·                Write strong beginnings for their stories.

·                Create more detailed settings within their stories.

Math:

Students have been working on the number sense standards for fourth grade.  Most students have a strong grasp of place value and we worked to deepen this understanding last week.  In the coming week, we will begin working with multiplication and division concepts.  Specifically, students will:

·                Learn about “factoring numbers” through one hundred.  

·                Learn two algorithms for multiplying double digit by double digits numbers.  (example: 26*49).  

Social Studies: Cultural Identity and  South Asia:  A Region of Superlatives

Cultural Identity:

·                Define the word culture and describe different aspects of their own cultures.

·                Identify their own cultural identities.

·                Create a poster representing their national identities.

·                Compare and contrast national identity with personal identity.

South Asia:

·                Learn the location of the eight countries in South Asia and their major geographic features, including the Himalayan Mountain Range, the three major river systems and the two major deltas.  

·                Make a geographical map of South Asia.

·                Discuss how elevation affects climate.

·                Begin to learn the major vocabulary regarding South Asian Geography.

Have a great week and I look forward to seeing everyone at conferences on Thursday and Friday.

Ms. Chris

UN Day

Please share any photos you took from UN day. Here are just a few!

Sep 7th Update

Announcements:

 ·                Math Tests: Students will receive their math tests on Monday and take them home to be signed by parents. Please send these tests back on Tuesday.

·                Student Council Representative: We will be having our elections for Student Council on Monday.
·                Ms. Chris is Absent from August 10th-16th. I am heading stateside to attend a wedding. In my absence, a full time sub will be with the class and as much as possible, a TA, EAL teacher or other 4th grade homeroom teacher will also be in the classroom to help keep grade level consistency. I will talk with the kids about my absence on Monday.

Please read below to learn about what is happening in our Units of Study:

Reading Workshop:

This week, we begin a new unit called "Following Characters into Meaning". The student objectives are:

·                Make "mental movies" of what is happening in our stories.

·                Envision the setting and discuss the importance of setting in stories.

·                Develop theories about characters, but revise these theories as we learn more about characters as the text progresses.

Literacy Letters

Literacy letter has the requirements for the weekly literacy letters. As the year progresses and students are more adept at writing about their reading, I will offer more creative options for the Literacy Letter (and it might not even be a letter!).

Writing Workshop

Students have been developing characters for their realistic fiction stories. Such creativity exists among these students!

This week students will:

·                Use a story arc to map out their stories

·                Write scenes that include action, dialogue, and emotions to show what is happening in their stories.

Math

Students took the first geometry assessment last week and tests will be sent home to be signed on Monday. We will continue to work toward mastering all of the geometry objectives listed on the students self assessment. In addition to taking a pre-assessment over the coming unit, we will begin to work on number sense objectives.

Students will:

·                Read and write number through the millions in standard and expanded form.

·                Compare multi-digit numbers based on meanings of the digits in each place, using <> and =.  

·                Use models to demonstrate understanding of place value.  

·                Identify place value names for multi-digit whole numbers.

·                Round numbers.  Find “Nice Numbers” (ie Round numbers) to add and subtract mentally with ease.

Science

Students will explain the experiments they tried at home using the scientific method. Students will also:

·                Compare and contrast simple circuits, parallel circuits, and series circuits.

·                Explore electromagnetism.

Scientific Method Presentation

Four students have shared the experiments they did at home. We have enjoyed listening to the different ideas and findings our friends have discovered. Students should continue to bring in their at home experiments.  Due date is September 19^th.