Weekly Highlights:
*Monday marks the celebration of Dr. Maritn Luther King, Jr. It is also a Day of Service. For local ideas to celebrate/particiapte in the day, please see the link below:
http://www.montgomerycountymd.gov/content/volunteer/MLK/mlkinfosheet.pdf
*January 18 is our Science & Technology Expo from 6:30-8:00. Thank you to all students who are participating! Even if your child is not presenting, families are welcome to attend. There will be many exciting activities this year. Thanks to our own Mrs. Cacace and many others on the PTA for organizing this Expo!
*Mrs. Sagona has challenged the school to read 1 million minutes by May 15. If the students and teachers reach the goal, each class will earn an ice cream party and an additional recess. Students should continue to read each night for 20 minutes (at least) and record this information on their reading logs.
Math 4:
For the next two weeks, we will focus on identifying fractions. Students should be able to compare and order fractions and mixed numbers, identify fractions as part of a set, and be able to make examples of fractions when changing what the "whole" represents.
We are using the Kahn Academy website to take individualized tutorials to practice our multiplication facts. For more information, visit
http://www.khanacademy.org/ and search for basic multiplication.
http://www.multiplication.com/
Social Studies:
Now that research on Native American Settlements is compiled, students will create a PowerPoint, MovieMaker or Audacity presentation to display what they have learned to the class. This is an in-class project but students may gather research at home as well. Our presentations will begin on approximately January 25. We cannot give a firm duedate as we assess availabiltiy to various technolgoy tools to create these projects. Students are welcome to bring a flash drive to save their work at school to take home to work on but are not required to do so.
Link to websites that have information about Native Americans:
http://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/schools/travilahes/mediacenter/webresources/nativeamericans.aspx
*Fourth graders will be taking a field trip to the National Museum of the American Indian on February 1, 2012. Permission slips were sent home two weeks ago. We ask that they be returned by January 20. Please let Ms. Hudson, Mr. Beddick, or Mrs. Dynda know if this is a problem. Thank you to the many parents who have volunteered to join us on the trip. 18 of you have expressed interest in coming with us! We will send home more information about your role as we get closer to the trip.
Link to the NAIM website:
http://www.nmai.si.edu/
Reading:
All students in fourth grade took the Measures of Academic Progress, Reading last week. A range of 196-219 is considered proficient for fourth graders this time of year.
This week we will continue to study the reading strategy determining importance. We continue to use the Writing Fix website that has great resources to practice responses:
http://writingfix.com/RICA/constructed_response.htm#passages
Our focus on determining importance will shift to identifying the theme in poetry. We will explore many different works of various poets to look for the author's message. A theme is a general message that is communicated through the characters, their actions, and events. Some questions we will ask are:
*How does the title of the poem relate to the theme?
*What you do want to remember about this poem?
*What do you think the author is trying to say with their words?
*What images come to mind when you read this poem?
*Why did the author write this poem?
(adapted from The Next Step in Guided Reading by Jan Richardson)
Writing:
Students have been working on their writing piece for quarter 2 and should be ready to revise and edit their writing. We will have self, partner, and then teacher conferences. We have talked about taking notes, making element of a story maps, and working on the organization of a piece of writing.
Most students have decided to write stories for the second quarter. Students must complete one writing project per quarter. We can't wait to share these with you!
Spelling:
Sort 9 will focus on endings that signal nouns or adjectives. There may not always be a root/base word found in words that end with -ary, -ery, or -ory. Each of the words with these endings should have the same sounds as other words with that ending. Some exceptions are stationery and century. Challenge your child to find others. We'd love to hear from him/her!
A great resource we found includes other ways for students to practice their spelling, even some apps for devices. The spelling activities that we suggested in the students spelling journals are just suggestions. Please feel free to adapt as your child needs to.
http://support.weta.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=43183.0&dlv_id=48444
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