First Week of Fourth Grade ✔

 Hi Everyone!

Happy Friday - what a great first week of school we had! There were so many rules and changes this year and everyone has handled them so well. I am really impressed.

You could tell by the end of the week that we are definitely working harder than we have the past few months. Many kids were struggling to keep up with the rigor and level attention that is often expected in 4th grade. The good news is that with a few reminders, everyone was respectful and doing their best!

Does your child have a reading log? Here are the choices of logs they were allowed to choose from. If they don't, tell them to make one. Students were supposed to begin logging their reading this week.

Does your child have one of these? It is very important. It's their agenda. They should pull it out every night to check and see what's for homework. (hint: it's ALWAYS read 20 minutes). Some nights I will add 15 minutes of writing or 10 minutes of math.

We did a lot of things this week to get to know ourselves better. One of those things was to create hopes and dreams for ourselves for the school year as well as specifically in writing. Next week will create classroom rules together. Students will sign the rules and we will begin enforcing them. I will send a photo of the Class Rules chart we create in next week's blog. 

In the next couple of weeks, we have our first student birthday! Unfortunately, treats (even pre-packaged store bought treats are not allowed this year. Instead, on your child's birthday they will choose the activity, greeting, and get to share during Morning Meeting. They can also bring in a book to share with the class. We will try to do an extra activity on their birthday as well. Thanks so much for understanding! I know it is a bummer that we cannot celebrate with treats.

As a reminder, you can always send your child with a box of snacks - if that is easier than packing one each morning!

Have you signed up for remind? If not, sign up here.

Do you have access to your child's seesaw journal? If not, click here.

Daily Health Screening

Please see this link for daily health screening. Parents should go through each of these questions with their child before the start of each school day.

Upcoming Events

September 7th: No School

September (date TBD): iReady Test (This will take the place of MAP)

September 24th: Virtual Family Night

September 25th: No School

September 30th: Picture Day

Curriculum Update

Reading: This week we will continue to fall in love with reading while also thinking about how we can be good reading partners. We will think about the kinds of notes we should be taking and the way we should talk about books. When your child is reading at home, they should be reading for about 18 minutes and writing for 2 minutes. 2 minutes should produce at least 3 Post-Its of writing to put in their book. Here are some charts that might be helpful:

            

Writing: This week we wrapped up our week of falling in love with writing. Check out the whole school initiative here: 

We hope the writing love lasts throughout the year. We are beginning a unit on Tuesday

about narrative stories that have trouble in them. Here are some charts that the kids will see this week. If it's hard for your child to come up with ideas in class, you might see writing come home as homework. Some days it will come just because writing at home is important too!

Math: We are working on rounding numbers to the nearest 10, 100, 1,000.  We will also be reviewing our addition strategies at the end of the week. This week, the first quick quiz will be coming home. Quick quizzes are to see if a child learned the new content that was being taught, if they didn't it gives me, as the teacher, time to reteach it to that child before the unit test in a few weeks. So a few wrong answers on a quick quiz is okay (and totally normal).

Social Studies: We are going to begin our study of geography this week. We will learn about our place in the country and world. We will also study the regions of the US and learn other valuable map skills.

Word study: This week we will be looking at one syllable words and words that have an ending that changes. A packet was sent home today that is optional. However, if you child does it, I will look at it and let them know I'm grateful for the extra effort.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me!

Enjoy your long weekend!

Best,

Carly Burris