News from 4th Grade
Week of 2/27 - 3/3
News at a Glance
- Conferences will be on Thursday, March 9th and Monday March 6th. If you missed the sign-up window but would still like a conference please email or Dojo message Mrs. LeBlanc at ellen_leblanc@pasd.us.
- Our homework for this trimester will be changing - see below for details!
- There is no school for students on Friday, March 10th and Monday March 13th.
- We are 2/3 through 4th grade!!
DEAR
This week we spent 15 minutes a day participating in Drop Everything and Read for Read Across America week.
Here Max is reading during DEAR time
Here Clayton, Naman, Grace, and McKenzie are reading
What we're learning this week
Journey's Reading Unit - Starting Wednesday (Day 1)
This week we’ll keep to the theme of change by asking, “What causes change in a community?” The biographical selection I Could Do That! Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote tells the story of the first women who were allowed to vote in the United States. Students will also read The Role of the Constitution, about the importance of the United States Constitution in our form of government
This week’s…
- Target Vocabulary: politics, intelligent, disorderly, approve, polls, legislature, amendment, candidates, informed, denied
- Vocabulary Strategy: Adages and proverbs
- Comprehension Skill: Cause and effect— figure out how events cause other events or are caused by other events
- Comprehension Strategy: Infer/ predict—use your own knowledge or clues from the text to understand unstated ideas
Math: More Geometry!!
This week we will continue our comprehensive Geometry unit with 3-D figures and supplemental angles.
Homework: Homework will be a small packet that will go home on Monday. There will be no math homework Thursday night due to no school on Friday.
Fluency: Our fact focus this week will be 0-12 division facts.
Science: Electricity
On Monday we will begin our electricity unit! Students will learn about inventors, types of circuits, conductors, and insulators!
This week we programmed small robots to drive along paths by directing it using speed, distance, and angle measures.
Nate, Jerod and Amber are working to get their robot, Sphero across his path.
Naman and Alisha are watching to see where Sphero will go!
Reading Homework
What are the details with this reading homework?
Due to popular demand, and a needed change of pace, I have decided to change our reading homework for this trimester. I have also read some homework research that supports students choice of reading and spending more time reading and less time writing is more beneficial than just reading alone.
Here is a summary of our new reading homework:
- Students must read 20 minutes a night (they can read more if they would like). Monday through Thursday. They must record how many pages they read a night.
- Students must write about what they read in a minimum of 2-3 fourth grade quality sentences. This means that are complete sentence, with proper grammar and spelling and that Mrs. LeBlanc can understand what you are trying to say. (When in doubt, read it aloud and see if it makes sense).
- A parent signature is required for each night of reading.
- On Friday, students will turn in their reading log sheet and they will receive a new one on Monday. Reading over the weekend is encouraged, but no log will be collected.
Reading Pages contest:
- To encourage reading beyond the minimum, and for some friendly competition, we will have a class contest for which student reads the most pages in the third trimester.
- In our room we will have a chart displayed with each students name. They will earn a sticker to place next to their name for every 50 pages they read. Students will be able to see how many pages each student has read and we will have a class goal of reading 700 pages for the trimester.
- At the end of the trimester, students can earn a class reading party if everyone reads 700 pages. The student who read the most pages will earn a gift basket!
What if my child forgot/lost their sheet?
They can get a new one from Mrs. LeBlanc or print a new one off our classroom website: https://www.palmyraportal.org/teacherweb/module.php?id=10846&tid=1594
Some of our class decided to dress up for "Dress like what you want to be when you grow up" Day during Read Across America week. They included teachers, athletes, military, dog trainers, scientist, marine biologist, and chefs!