Thies' Week...
February 3rd, 2014
Happy Monday!
I hope you all had a wonderful weekend. Here's is to hoping that we will have a full week of school, but it is not looking very promising. Here is what we will be learning this week.
Spelling
This week our words focus on the /en/, /ing/, /ed/, and /est/ spelling patterns. The list will go home tomorrow and our test will be on Friday. We will still be having our spelling test on Friday, even if we have a snow day...
- forgotten
- rewritten
- hoping
- hopping
- robed
- robbed
- bidding
- fittest
- startting
- staring
Math
The kiddos took their math test over large numbers today. I was out of the classroom today again for curriculum writing, so I do not know overall how the kiddos did yet, but I'm sure they did great! We will be starting our next topic tomorrow, which is a review of money and solving problems involving money. In this topic the students will have to solve problems involving money including finding the change for a given amount (as I was working with the kids in small groups last week, I saw many of them were having a hard time subtracting across zeros, so this is something we will be working on and you could work on at home with your child), working with bills and coins, reading and interpreting data involving money in graphs, and solve capacity and cost problems. You can be expecting a study guide to come home tomorrow and our test will be on Wednesday, February 12th.
Reading
We will continue working in our historical fiction books this week. We will be working on various reading strategies, emphasizing on point of view. The students seem engaged in these books and are doing a wonderful job with them. I am hopefully going to introduce a website called Kidblog to the kids this week and allow them to respond to the text through a blog. I may not get to this with all groups, this week, but that is my plan. :)
Writing
This week we will be working on opinion writing. I read the kids two versions of the story "The Three Little Pigs". The first version is the traditional version and the second was the book called The True Story of the Three Little Pigs and this is the wolf's "side of the story". I told the students to pick a side. They brainstormed reasons why they feel that that version of the story is the correct one, using details from the text to support their response. We will be taking these pieces through the writing process and will continue them the rest of the week.
Content
We will spend the beginning of the week discussing the Louisiana Purchase and its affects on the United States. We will then switch gears to science and will be discussing rocks and the rock cycle.
Important Information
- 6 Flags reading forms are due February 20th
- I don't know if reading logs went home or not today. If not, I will send them home tomorrow. Again, I am asking that the kids read an hour a week.
- Valentine's Day-Since we will be out of school on Valentine's Day, we will be exchanging Valentine's at the end of the day on Thursday, February 13th. The students are allowed to bring in boxes that they decorate(d) at home. If they don't bring a box, I am asking that all kids bring a bag of some sort to take their cards home in. The kids asked me if they could have a contest for the best Valentine's box and I told them it would be fine. I don't know what if any the "prize" will be for winning, but I told them we would have a small contest. The kids are by no means required to participate. As for Valentine's, we have 25 students in the class, so please be sure to bring in 25 cards if you and your child would like to participate.
- We are running extremely low on dry erase markers. If you have any you would like to donate, it would be GREATLY appreciated. :)
- I will also take any items you are willing to donate for the class auction that we will be having at the end of the quarter at any time.
Wrapping it up...
Thanks as always for all of your support! Don't know what I would do without each and every one of you and your wonderful child! :)
Have a great night!
~Maegen
P.S. The sub said that the class was the best fourth grade class she has had all year! Yay! Go kiddos! I think they are pretty awesome, but it's nice to hear it from someone else too. :)