Spring Creek Cardinals
4th Grade Newsletter
NOVEMBER 2017 EDITION
Remember, we need your help connecting to sponsors who can make a pledge to help our school! Please make sure all pledges for the laps are entered on funrun.com. The more pledges we get, the more incentives our class earns on our Pledge-O-Meter. Plus, for every $30 per lap our class pledges, a donation will be made to help teachers fund their classroom projects through Boosterthon's giveback initiative, Project Classroom. I know our students are excited to rise to the challenge and lend a helping hand to teachers everywhere!
Thank you in advance for your generosity and supporting our school.
Outside
Inside the museum
Looking at various tools used
Each Monday, we talk about our Mindset
Did you take pictures at a school event?
so they can be added to the yearbook
MATH Update
Math in November
We have been cruising along in math. We have been working on fractions these last few weeks and will continue with more fraction concepts until just after the Thanksgiving break. It has been challenging at times, but the students are working hard to learn the many fractions concepts. I’m very proud of how hard they have been working during this time and I am also impressed by what they remember from 3rd grade!
Soon we will begin our journey into multiplication, beyond just knowing our multiplication facts. For those students who are still on addition or subtraction, next week I will be moving all students to multiplication for their XtraMath fluency practice. If they have become more fluent in knowing their multiplication facts quickly, they can more easily go through the steps of multiplication. Not only will we multiply 2-digit by 2-digit problems, but we will multiply up to a 4-digit number by a 1-digit number. We will also apply those multiplication skills to problem-solving with multiplication in which the students will need to read a word problem and figure out how to solve the question being asked in the problem. When we are learning these multiple digit multiplication problems, I will be teaching your children non-traditional methods of multiplication. These methods help children to understand what is happening in the process of multiplication, rather than just plugging in numbers to an algorithm or a formula. Eventually we will learn the “traditional algorithm” that most of you probably learned while you were in school. But for now, please do not try to teach them the way you learned. If you have any questions or would like me to explain how they are learning to multiply, please contact me with an email and I’ll try to help you out. You are also always welcome to come to class and learn with us or I can meet with you during my conference time, before or after school to explain how your child is learning. Thank you for letting me help your child grow how I am teaching them, so that they are successful “understanding” math, not just “doing” math.
Looking at artifacts
Pulling a plow!
Scavenger Hunt!
READING/WRITING Update
Oh the groans I hear every day when I say, "It is time to put our books away" or "We need to stop and clean up." Your kids groans make me smile. They love reading and writing so much that it is torture to stop! Be sure to reinforce your child's love of reading by talking to them about their books. Ask, "What are you reading right now?" "Why do you like this book?" "Share with me the best part?"
This month we are continuing a reading unit on analyzing characters. During this unit we will think deeply about characters to understand their motivations, their relationships, and how they change throughout a story. This work will help your child develop the characters they create in their writing.
We are finishing up a personal narrative piece next week and we will take we have learned about writing a personal narrative to write about a scientist in personal narrative format. It will be a fun to write from the perspective of a scientist and the problems, contributions, and impact the scientist had on the world. Character development will be important. Students will be expected to develop the character’s physical description and the character's internal thoughts and feelings through actions and words.
Spelling rules we will study this month are adding suffixes and the patterns that are created based on whether a root word ends in a certain consonant, has a certain type of vowel or syllabication. If you are curious about the patterns we are learning, you can google the following patterns: changing y to I, dropping rule, floss rule, doubling rule.
Our classroom spelling bee will be on Thursday, November 16. Your student has already brought home the list of words to study, but if they need a new list, I have some extras in the classroom. The school wide spelling bee is scheduled for December 20th.
Poetry Friday is going great. The students look forward to this special day of reading and writing poetry. This month we will focus on descriptive language, synonyms, and similes when writing poetry.
SCIENCE/SOCIAL STUDIES Update
Remember that each week we take a weekly quiz. This assessment consists of 5-10 questions to help me see if your student is understanding what we are learning about each week. This is also a great way for you and your student to see if they are participating in class discussions, asking questions and understanding the curriculum we cover in science and social studies.
In Social Studies, we will be studying the following topics:
"The New World" - European exploration and settlement of the Western Hemisphere
Spanish explorers - accomplishments of several Spanish explorers
Rene Robert Cavalier de La Salle - how he impacted Texas with his journey
The first missions in Texas - how they contributed to the patterns of Texas settlement
In Science, we will investigate conductors/insulators in electrical circuits, force and forms of energy. Last week we worked in our Science Stations to circle back around to all of our vocabulary and review key concepts. As we add more vocabulary, we will circle back around again to help your student remember, better understand and retain our learning
**Encourage your child to review the vocabulary on the website.
Looking Ahead...
October 30 - November 10 = BOOSTERTHON
November 9- Sing-A-Long
November 10- Boosterthon Fun Run fourth grade runs from 8:15 - 9:15
November 14- School Picture Retakes
November 21- Grandparents Day Lunch
November 22-24 Thanksgiving Break
Spring Creek Elementary
Website: http://sc.csisd.org/
Location: 2450 Brewster, College Station, TX
Phone: 979-694-5838
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CSISDSpringCreek
Twitter: @sc_elementary