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