Week of March 7

We had a blast on our Skate City field trip with Mr.Guell last Monday! Here's some photos! 🕺

As you probably know, graphic novels are all the rage here in fourth grade. A lot of students have also been really enjoying the I Survived series and we recently learned that they make I Survived graphic novels! If you're interested in purchasing and donating this series, we'd greatly appreciate it!

Environmental Club Project:

NDLC will be collecting your Little Bites bags from now until May! The Entenmann company has a collection service where if you send in a box of recycled Little Bites bags they will give you the money for your organization. It's a nice way to raise money for our school for recycling!

Here are examples of what we are collecting:

Send the empty bags to school and we will take care of the rest!

Thanks,

NDLC Environmental Club

Curriculum Updates:

Reading: Our historical fiction book club unit has come to an end! I have really enjoyed students working with students in these book clubs and watching their club conversations and discussions really level up. Watching them learn about historic events while engaging in texts that have interested them, has been really rewarding. My hope for them is to have been exposed to a genre they now love!

Math: We will have our Unit 6 Math Test on Tuesday! Student's pink review packet will be due Tuesday as well! Please check in with your child and encourage them to complete it!

Writing: Just like reading, our historical fiction writing unit has come to an end. Students celebrated all their hard work and their pieces by gifting Mr. VW and Mrs. Kocourek's third graders with a new bin of stories for their classroom libraries. When having a discussion on how we should celebrate, the students enjoyed teaching the third graders about their writing from the previous unit, so they thought this was another way that they could be leaders and help the younger grades. They hope that their writing can inspire the third graders, learn about the fourth grade writing expectations, and simply enjoy their writing. 

Word Study: For fourth grade word study, we revisit the same material learned in third grade. That being said, there is a certain expectation that students are much more comfortable with the material learned. I've been feeling that students aren't finding the importance in word study and it is beginning to show much more on their end of unit tests. To try and motivate them, we've been aiming to get a class average of at least 80% or higher. Our Unit 6 class average was 58%, and earlier this week we found out that our class average for Unit 7 was 64%. Seeing the improvement is great, but I believe this group of kids can easily achieve that 80% or higher. My goal is to start making the word study unit review packets (that students have always been receiving to go home) mandatory for those kiddos who are demonstrating they need more practice

Enjoy your weekend! ☀

Carly Burris