Hello!
I had such a great time talking to each and everyone of you at conferences last Thursday! I am really looking forward to meeting with the rest of you this Tuesday. I cannot say this enough, but thank you so much for being such a wonderful and supportive parents to not only your child, but to me as well. It is very much appreciated. Your children have made such an impact on me and I smile whenever I think about the fact that in five, ten, or even twenty years from now, when I think back to my first year teaching, your children will be coming to mind. They are an incredible group.
Last week bookmarks were sent home advertising the Virtual Book Fair this year. I have heard that in the past some parents like to donate books to the classroom. If that is something you are interested in doing, here are a list of books I think the class would enjoy:
Dog Man Crime and Punishment by Dav Pilkey
Baby-Sitters Club by Gale Galligan
Rowley Jefferson's Awesome Friendly Adventure by Jeff Kinney
Becoming Brianna by Terri Libenson
Owl Diaries Eva in the Spotlight by Rebecca Elliot
Diary of a Wimpy Kid The Deep End by Jeff Kinney
Here are the links to access the Virtual Book Fair for NDLC:
https://bookfairsfiles.scholastic.com/flippingbooks/F20-premium-booklist/F20-premium-booklist.html#p=1
This Friday, November 20th it is a half day. Fourth graders will be released at 11:30am.
November 17: Virtual Parent Teacher Conferences (4:00pm - 7:30pm)
November 20: Early Release
November 25: No School
November 26: Happy Thanksgiving! No School
November 27: No School
Curriculum Update:
Reading: We are wrapping up our nonfiction weather unit this week. Students are taking all the information they've gathered throughout the unit to make a presentation that they will be presenting on Tuesday. Some students chose to create a poster board with their team while others are mostly creating a slideshow. We will upload these to Seesaw later this week! After we finish our presentations, we will be taking an end-of-unit assessment to see what we've learned throughout the nonfiction unit. Our next unit brings us back to fiction reading. Students won't be filling out a book log the same way they used to. It will now look like this:
They will fill in their plan for the day listing a page goal, a partner talk goal, and a jot goal. They are challenged to practice the same "talk" with someone at home when they do their homework. They should also practice the same "jot goal" that they did in class at home. Please remind your child to talk AND WRITE about their reading each night for homework. During out nonfiction unit, students learned about notetaking using the following strategies: Chronological, boxes and bullets, problem/solution, cause/effect, and compare/contrast. Students will be learning that they can use those same strategies and organizers to take notes about characters in fiction stories.
Writing: We are nearing the end of our opinion writing unit. Students are currently working on writing persuasive speeches! I am very impressed by some of the topics student's chose to write about - I definitely have some young activists in my classroom! We will be celebrating all they've done throughout the opinion writing unit this week as well as take 'mid-essay unit' to see what kids still need to learn when it comes to writing essays. This will guide what is taught as kids start writing essays about the books they read.
Math: We finished the multiplication unit on Friday. If your child's test comes home with a low score, please know that I will keep working with them in class. We will be moving on to the division unit on Tuesday which uses multiplication a lot for understanding the concept of equal groups. Please refrain from teaching your child the standard algorithm. Take a look at the progression of how division is learned here.
Word Study: We are in Unit 4. We are learning about the vowel-consonant-e exceptions, continuing work with vowel and consonant suffixes, as well as better understanding the silent "e" and how words with a silent "e" change when adding the suffix "-ing".
Content: We are finishing up our Energy unit this week! Students are creating presentations that they will be presenting on Tuesday. Many teams decided to create a poster board and some decided to create a slideshow. These will be posted to Seesaw later this week!
Hope you all had a relaxing weekend. Here's to another great week!
Carly Burris
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