The Silver Scoop
November 16-20
Our Students Show PRIDE!
Several students earned a PRIDE band last week. Congratulations to Christian, Mia, Bella, and Kiki! They earned their teal bands for having 60 PRIDE credits.
Upcoming Events
I am planning to send midterms home on Monday or Tuesday. Please look over your child's report and then sign and return the bottom portion of the midterm. Of course, if you have any questions or concerns about your child's progress, please contact me.
This week our class will see the 3rd Grade Music Program on Tuesday afternoon. On Friday afternoon we will see a preview of PHS's fall musical Into the Woods.
This week's special schedule:
Monday--Computer Lab, Tuesday--Library, Wednesday--Music, Thursday--Art, Friday--Gym
Celebrating Success!
Last Week's Learning
On Friday, the school-wide Waste Free Lunch Challenge was a success! We cut our waste in half, from 14 to 7 trash bags, and also saved 3 full bags of recyclables from the landfill! Our class was instrumental in making this happen. As the teacher leader for the Challenge, I put the kids to work! Many students were celebrities this week as they appeared on morning announcements promoting the event. Other students donned plastic gloves and worked during one of the 6 lunch periods helping students identify recyclable waste. Our class will get the opportunity to help out again soon, too. Last year I wrote a grant to the Hendricks County Solid Waste Management District for money to purchase containers for lunch recycling. We are waiting on the last few containers to arrive, and once they do, we will be able to recycle at lunch EVERY DAY! Our class will once again have the opportunity to help their peers learn how to recycle at lunch. Pretty soon, Clarks Creek will be much GREENER thanks to these efforts!
What We Are Studying This Week
DOL/Word Work -- We will do Daily Paragraph Editing Week #4 each morning this week. On Friday students will take a quiz over one of the paragraphs we corrected. In Word Work, we are on List #14 on irregular plural nouns. There will be a test on Friday. This Week's Words: videos, teeth, potatoes, themselves, lives, leaves, cliffs, roofs, halves, moose, radios, sheep, cuffs, beliefs, patios, banjos, tornadoes, tomatoes, hoofs, and loaves.
Math -- We are moving on to Topics 7 and 8 to learn how to multiply two double-digit numbers. We are diving right in and will begin learning the double-digit multiplication algorithm on Monday. The students will continue to practice it all week. In fact, I hope that by skipping ahead to that lesson (8-4), the students will have more opportunities to practice the skill throughout the remainder of the unit and will be experts soon! This week we will also do Lessons 7-2 and 8-3, which are both about multiplying by multiples of 10. There will be homework on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. We will continue to practice skip counting, multiplication and division facts, and will review math concepts each day with our "Mountain Math" questions. I'm proud to report that our list of students who have finished the mini division fact tests is growing. Congratulations to Carson, Maddox, Alexis, Bella, Tyran, and Gabi who passed these tests last week!
Science -- We are finishing up the unit on Electricity and Magnetism from the old red science books, and there will be an assignment to finish for homework on Monday. Then we will read a Science A-Z reader on the same topics. There may be a vocabulary activity to finish for homework on Thursday, and the students will be able to use the reader to take a little quiz on Friday.
Reading -- This week we will read the tall tale "Paul Bunyan" from the blue reading books. Tall tales use a type of figurative language called hyperbole, which we will be studying. In fact, the students will read several tall tales this week, identifying examples of figurative language that are used in the texts. There will be an assignment over "Paul Bunyan" on Tuesday and a story quiz on Friday.
Language -- This week we will continue to study conjunctions, focusing on subordinate conjunctions. We will also review all of the parts of speech we've studied so far this year. We are wrapping up our most recent writing project, so published myths are due by Friday. Many students already finished these last Friday. Ask your child about the fun way we are publishing these tales!
Social Studies -- We will begin reading Lesson 2 on the Eastern Woodland Native American tribes that lived in Indiana. The students will learn some characteristics that these tribes had in common as well as the features that made them different. We will study the Miami, Shawnee, Delaware (or Lenape), and Potawatomi tribes. There might be homework over Lesson 2 on Thursday.
This Week's Cartoon
Mrs. Kara Silver
4th Grade Teacher
Clarks Creek Elementary
Plainfield Community Schools
Email: ksilver@plainfield.k12.in.us
Website: http://www.plainfield.k12.in.us
Location: 401 Elm Drive, Plainfield, IN, 46168
Phone: 317-839-0120