PARENT UPDATES BLOG
Friday, August 27. 2010
Communication between home and school and between parents and children is important. This blog site will help keep you informed of what our students are learning each week. Your awareness of what is going on in room 23 will help you to start an informed conversation with your child. Encourage your fourth grader to reflect upon the day's activities, for reflection is an important process resulting in progress and improvement. I will post a blog each Monday. Please help by reading, together with your child, the Updates Blog each week. Let's work together to best influence your son or daughter's intellectual, social, and emotional growth.
What's happening this week?
LANGUAGE ARTS
We are reviewing Thinking Maps to help organize our ideas. We are working on Word Choice, specifically similes. Monday's homework is to practice using similes, a type of figurative speech that students will use regularly when writing narratives. Our first story in reading books is called "Akiak." It is based on the Iditarod Race that takes place annually in Alaska. Later this week, Miss Grumm, our TOSA (language arts support teacher) will give a lesson about subject and predicate. The first spelling test of the year will be this Thursday. Students have a spelling list in the Homework Packet they took home on Monday.
MATH
We will work all week on Chapter 1, Understanding Place Value. For the most part, this will help students review what they already know, except that fourth grade works with very big numbers. Students should understand the following: standard form, expanded form, word form, place value, period. Each math chapter is divided into several lessons. Our pace is about a lesson a day. Students will be assigned daily math homework. If your child struggles with math facts, please encourage daily practice. The children should be comfortable with basic addition, subtraction, multiplication (up to 12), and division facts.
SOCIAL STUDIES
The children are reviewing and learning about geographical terms. This week, they are working in groups to present an oral lesson to the class about a geographical term.
SCIENCE
This week, we will focus on Science Process Skills and the Scientific Process. This is a foundational skill that all of our junior scientists need to learn so that they get in the habit of approaching science inquiries by utilizing the process skills that they will be working on this week. You can get some background information by viewing the online science textbook together with your child and asking him or her to show you what we have read. I will be supplementing the reading with other resources and materials as well.
HEALTH
This week, the focus will be "Diseases That Spread." In the next couple of weeks, your child should understand the following terms (what we refer to as "Language of the Discipline"): pathogens, bacteria, fungi, viruses, protists, communicable disease.
P.E.
All fourth grade students go out at the end of the day on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays for P.E. We are starting with football.
In addition . . .
Thanks to families who covered textbooks. Yay!
I appreciate the tissue and hand wipes donations. Thanks!
Please refer to the suggested supply list sent home (or viewable from our class website). We're already utilizing many of the supplies on the list, so it will help if you can gather them up soon. Please keep in mind that the supplies are optional. Thank you!
Keep the paper work coming in. Emergency info., rights signature sheet, etc. along with the large brown envelope is what I'm hoping to collect this week. :o)
Visit our Class Website to see latest news and daily homework at: bs.ausd.net
Back-to-School Night is on Tuesday at 6:30 PM in room 23. I will begin on time for a short 1/2 hour talk about classroom schedules, policies, and grade level curricula. It will also be a good time to sign up for November Student-Led Conference. I'm looking forward to seeing you Tuesday evening.
