Weekly Newsletter, January 30-February 3

Weekly Highlights:

31: 9:30 Group Pictures
31: Class Pizza Party-Reward for earning marbles
1:  Field trip to the National Museum of the American Indian (Chaperones please arrive by 9:15)
2: We will have a second math class from 12:30-1:10 instead of social studies


*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. We continue to record the minutes we read each day in school on the log as well.

Math 4:

This week we will compare and identify decimals to the thousandth place.  We will begin the week by using digi blocks to look at parts of a whole.  We will write decimals and discuss how they relate to fractions and money.

A review packet will be sent home Monday with your child to review for our Unit 3 Assessment.  Students should bring this completed packet to school on Wednesday, February 8 to review in class.  We will take this assessment on Thursday & Friday, February 9 & 10.

Weblinks to help studnets practice fractions & decimals at home:
http://www.aaamath.com/dec.html
http://www.okaloosa.k12.fl.us/oakhill/fractions.html


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:

Students will continue to film their movies this week and present completed projects.  Since we are having social studies all day on Wednesday, we will only have class time on Friday this week. 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. Thank you to the many parents who have volunteered to join us on the trip. Thirty Four of you have expressed interest in coming with us! You should have received a confirmation letter last Friday asking if you were still interested in attending.  If you did not, please email/call me as soon as possible.

Link to the NAIM website:

http://www.nmai.si.edu/


Reading:

This week we will continue to practice writing Brief Contstructed Responses. We continue to use the Writing Fix website that has great resources to practice responses:

http://writingfix.com/RICA/constructed_response.htm#passages


This week we will focus on identifying the main idea of an informational text.  We will use the headings and subheadings to create a question. As they read the information under that heading, they will take notes to answer that question.  This is the literal level for main idea that will reinforce the purpose of text features like headings to assit readers in undestanding more complex text.

Writing:
Students will begin to develop writing projects for quarter 3. This week's focus from the 6 traits of writing will be conventions.  We will discuss the importance of editing our work and have  mini-quiz at the end of the week.

A link to a website for additional information on the 6 Traits is below:
http://www.edina.k12.mn.us/concord/teacherlinks/sixtraits/sixtraits.html

Spelling:

Sort 10 will focus on endings that change adjectives to nouns and suggest a "condition" or "quality".  When using the suffixes -ty and -ity, the accent sometimes shifts from the first syllable to the second or the syllable right before the suffix. (example: festive, festivity)


Our spelling test will be taken on Friday, February 10.

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