4th Grade News 11/10/2014
Mrs. Curtright & Mrs. Foster
Important Information
Upcoming Events:
*11/11 Veteran's Day Celebration 7:30 breakfast
* 11/20 Stagecoach's Annual Hoe Down November 20th from 5:30-7:30 pm. Early ticket order forms are coming home today.
*11/20-Picture Retakes-Students must have a note or pictures. You must bring your money the day of pictures if you plan to purchase. Picture packets are coming home today.
* 4th Grade is participating in the can food drive. We have been asked to send canned meat products which could include tuna, chicken, Vienna sausage, or Spam. This is a grade level competition.
Math, Science, and Social Studies
Math-What a great week of learning we had in math last week!! Students worked extremely hard solving multi-step area and perimeter word problems. I was very proud of their effort and enthusiasm in which they tackled each problem. They were also proud of themselves and the perseverance it took to work through each problem.
On Monday, we will have our accuracy check on the 8 facts. I will also be taking up their Weekly Math Fact Fluency Log that was homework last week. In fluency this week we will be working on the 7 facts. Students will be making flashcards for these facts on Tuesday. Our homework this week will be to complete the Math Fact Fluency Log. Students are to spend 10 per night studying the 7 facts. On the math log, students will log the time practiced, the activity they did, and get a parent signature. There is a required time of 50 minutes each week and math logs are due every Monday.
Last week students learned how to use the area model to solve 2 X 2 digit multiplication problems. We will continue learning different ways to multiply this week. Students will learn the partial product strategy and the standard algorithm, much the way you and I learned how to multiply.
Social Studies-This week we will begin our unit on government. We will begin this unit by talking about the documents that helped form the government we have today. We will begin our research with the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Gettysburg Address.
Reading, Writing and Word Study
Reading: We will be focusing our attention on nonfiction reading this week. We will specifically look at nonfiction text features, summarizing informational text, and primary and secondary sources. We will focus our attention this week on space exploration--specifically on Mars. Several students wanted websites with more info--I've listed several great ones below.
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/#.VGDrh_nF-So
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/multimedia/videos/index.cfm?v=38
There will be a fluency homework coming home for this week! Please listen to your child read this on a daily basis to help him/her practice with rate, expression, and fluency.
Writing: We will begin focusing our writing on writing like a scientist. On Tuesday, students will be choosing a weather, space, or natural disaster to research and begin writing about. We will be researching in the classroom and in the computer lab. Students are welcome to research outside of school as well. We will really focus on setting up our writing using the nonfiction text features we'll be learning about in reading.