News From Grade 4
Week of December 15
Animal Track Books
Ms. Fischer is continuing our research project with animals of Minnesota. Her students received instruction in how to engineer books with writing paper and secret pages. Those students then met with our class and taught the kids what they had learned. We were so impressed with how they worked together and learned from each other! Thanks also to our parent volunteers, Mrs. Robinson and Mrs. Argenta, for coming in to help.
Challenge Clubs
We've started three challenge clubs recently: art, coding, and book clubs. Each meets once a week, and students may participate as often as they like, in whichever clubs they want. Each is student-led. Book club members choose a book to read for the week, then meet Wednesday at lunch to discuss it. Three students receive coding lessons from Ms. Vasquez biweekly, then on Fridays they teach the other coding club members what they learned. Art club participants decide what project they want to work on, how to get needed materials, and create their artwork Wednesdays at recess. All groups can also post messages (which I immediately get copies of) to their clubs through Schoology. I'm excited to see what they all do next!
Math: Digital Root
This week we'll be working on a short unit about digital root. This is a number property that can be used to check work with the four major operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division). It can also be used to determine factors, which is really helpful for working with division and simplifying fractions. To find the digital root, add up the digits of a number. Repeat this until the sum is less than ten. Ask your child to show you all the "tricks" they can do with digital root. Then ask them to explain how the "tricks" relate to our base ten number system.
Help Needed!
A request from Principal Palm:
As you may have noticed in the recent Weaver Lake newsletter, we are being reviewed by the Northwest Suburban Integration School District(NWSISD) this year to make sure we are fulfilling our STEM Magnet mission. Your help is needed and will only take a few minutes.
Please take the time to answer 4 questions about our school by clicking on this link: https://docs.google.com/a/apps.district279.org/forms/d/1V6RBZZJG14XlJICtgkI4MIxbZYGfRTDps1i3u12yFRA/viewform?c=0&w=1
We are always working to improve and thank you for being part of the process.
Miss Gaab's Contact Information
Email: gaabj@district279.org
Website: https://sites.google.com/a/apps.district279.org/gaab/home
Phone: 763-213-3860