4th Grade News
January 2019 Newsletter
General Information
-School starts promptly at 7:40. Please ensure your student has time to get to their classroom before school begins. If they are late, they might miss important information they need!
Important Dates
- 1/7- Quarter 3 begins!
- 1/9- Westward, Ho! PBL Showcase at 8:30 am.
- 1/11- Progress Reports go home (please sign and return the following Monday)
- 1/16- Family Fun Night
- 1/21- No School: Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Special Areas
Leadership Trait of the Month: Growth Mindset
The start of a new calendar year allows us to reflect on the achievements of the previous year and consider goals for the year ahead. For the next several weeks, our CVES community is encouraged to set goals and learn more about having a growth mindset. We’d like to share with you what we are talking about at school so that you can have follow up conversations at home to reinforce your own child’s development of a growth mindset.
Children’s beliefs about themselves shapes learning in significant ways impacting motivation, academic behaviors, responses to challenges or setbacks and overall achievement. We want to support students in recognizing that intelligence isn’t fixed and that through effort we grow. We will do this at school by having open discussions about individual goal setting and challenging our mindsets when they are fixed in a specific area. We ask you to remind your child that there will be times when they are faced with difficult challenges but they can persevere. Remind them that when things are difficult, their brain grows if they persist through the challenge. Each time they learn something new, their brain is making new connections. Your child needs to know this is possible.
Some questions you might ask your child while in the car, over a meal or before bed to help reinforce a growth mindset:
- What are some things that you can’t do yet but hope to be able to do this semester?
- Did you make a mistake today? What did you learn from that mistake?
- What did you do that was difficult today? Do you think practice might make that easier over time?
Academics
On-Level Math: 4.1 Math: We are continuing to work on unit 4, adding and subtracting fractions. Students will be able to:
-Add and subtract mixed numbers with like denominators.
-Solve word problems involving addition and subtraction of fractions.
-Solve word problems involving multiplication or a fraction by a whole number.
-Unit 4 Parent Letter: https://www.georgiastandards.org/Georgia-Standards/Frameworks/Unit-4-4th-grade-parent-letter.pdf
Advanced Math: Students will begin 5th Grade Unit 2. We will be rounding, comparing, adding, and subtracting decimals.
Accelerated Math: Students will be learning how to multiply and divide fractions.
-Unit 4 Parent Letter: https://www.georgiastandards.org/Georgia-Standards/Frameworks/Unit-4-5th-grade-parent-letter.pdf
Reading (all levels): Students will be working on comparing and contrasting poetry and dramas, according to the standard. We will also begin our Greek Mythology unit.
On/Advanced Language: We will be learning the following skills; progressive verb tenses, antonyms/synonyms, and relative adverbs.
Accelerated Language: Students will be working on a poetry unit to incorporate the 5th grade standards. We will be looking at the types of poems and as well as structure. Students will also determine theme of poem using details and be able to reflect on what the author is really saying through inferring.
Science: We are beginning our unit on Light and Sound. Students will be able to:
-Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information about the nature of light and how light interacts with objects.
-Classify materials as opaque, transparent, or translucent.
-Investigate the path light travels from a light source to a mirror and how it is reflected by the mirror using different angles.
-Obtain, evaluate, and communicate information about how sound is produced and changed and how sound and/or light can be used to communicate.
-Design and construct a device to communicate across a distance using light and/or sound.
Westward Ho! PBL Project
New Year!
On behalf of the entire fourth grade team, we hope you had a wonderful holiday season and have a happy New Year!!