Thank you so much to everyone who was able to make it to conferences this week!  I was very proud of all of our students and how well they led their own conferences.  It was great watching the pride they had in themselves and sharing their educational goals with their families.  Thank you for your willingness to try something new and for all of your great feedback!

We have 2 SCSU student teachers starting in our room next week.  I always believe the more teachers the better so I am very excited to have them here for 3 hours a day for 6 weeks.

Our main reading skills for next week will be determining fact from opinion and summarizing. We will also be looking different suffixes and investigating some greek and latin word parts.

In preparation for our NEXT lessons, I would love for families to take the time and talk about where their own ancestors came from.  I am going to be encouraging students to interview members of their family to find out more about their own backgrounds and cultures.

We will be having our end of the month reward this week for all students who do not have any late work.  Please check with your child to be sure they are all caught up!

Our first White Elephant Sale will be held on Friday.  Students were given a permission slip that needs to be returned in order to participate.  We are practicing responsibility so they MUST have this form signed and they cannot get a new one if lost.
Friday is also pajama day and our school will be viewing the movie "Ant Bully" as a culmination to Bully Prevention Month.

If you thought of any other questions you may still have after conferences, please let me know!

Have a great weekend/week:)

Conference Week

Conference time is here!  I am so excited to watch our 4th graders lead their own conferences.  We have been practicing this at school and they have many wonderful things to share with you!

Our two main reading skills for this week are understanding characters and making inferences.  We have been working on looking deeply at the clues author's give us and using our own background knowledge.  We have so many thinkers in our class:)

In math, the students are still working in Unit 3 which focuses on place value and other number operations.

*Exciting News*  Our class has reached 100 books read!!  What a great milestone to reach while only in October!  Ask your child how many books they read out of this 100.

Just a reminder that there is no school on Friday due to morning conferences.

Other items due this week:
Book orders are due tomorrow.
Reading logs are due Thursday.

Next week we will be having our first White Elephant Sale.  Students will be bringing home a note further explaining this tomorrow.

I look forward to seeing everyone soon!  Have a great week!

Happy Friday!

We had a great and very productive week here in 4th grade!  We have been practicing different strategies to help us find the theme of a story and talked about many common themes that books have.  We will be taking our skill test for this week's lesson on Monday.
Reading W.I.N. is up and going!  Students will all be having word study in their groups on Mondays of each week.  They should be practicing their words at home using sorts and strategies taught at school.  They will be testing on their words the following Monday.
For math W.I.N. time, Mr. Krupa took time to train some of students to be expert teachers on different math concepts. Students got to choose what math topics they need more help/practice with.  I was so amazed on how well our class did with this process.  We have many future teachers in our class:)
Next week is our Education Minnesota (MEA) break already!  There will be no school on Thursday or Friday. Because of this, reading logs will be due on Wednesday, October 16th.
Next week we will be finishing up our lesson 4 activities and preparing for our student-led conferences.
If you have any questions, please let me know!  Thank you for all of your help and support from home and have a great weekend/week!

Our week in pictures!

This week we are focusing on theme in reading.  We are practicing using clues from the story to analyze what message the author is trying to tell us.  In writing, we are continuing to work on dialogue and will be adding dialogue to our personal narratives.  We are almost to the editing/revising stage!

New book orders went home this week.  Orders will be due on Wednesday, October 23rd.  Students put a sticker with our classroom's online code into their agendas.

We welcomed 2 new students into our classroom in the past couple of weeks.  It has been so great watching the class work together to make them feel welcome.  We sure do have a great group of students and I find many reasons to be proud of them everyday:)

New WIN groups started this week!  Please check in with your student to find out which group they are in and what they have been practicing so far.

Conferences are just around the corner!  I will be sending home date/time reminders later this week.  Remember: These conferences will be led by your student so they must be able to attend! I am very excited for you to see all of the great work they have been doing here at school.

Thursday will be this year's first Unity Day here at PV.  Please remind your child to wear their Unity T-shirts or any orange!

Due dates this week:
Friday, October 11th- Reading Logs and PV T-Shirt Orders
Please also be sure your student is finishing their math homework each night.

Next Week-  Fundraiser materials due!

Have a great rest of the week!!

Mid-Week Reminders

Students should be reading their 20 minutes each night.  Reading logs are due Friday.
Math homework should be signed by an adult each night and come to school the next morning completed. 2-6 was brought home today.  They have a study guide that will be due on Friday.  They will also be taking the Unit 2 test on Friday!

Pleasantview T-shirt orders went home today and are due Oct. 11th if interested.

We have been working hard on writing dialogue this week.  Ask your student about the partner writing activity they started today!

Reading W.I.N. groups will be starting on Monday!  Word Study will also be starting next week.  We will be sending something home to explain 'at home' practicing expectations.

I hope you are having a great week!

Yesterday was a very exciting day for us as we received all of our new classroom books!  These books came from donations received from a website called Donor's Choose.  I made a project to get more books into the classroom and my project was fully funded giving us around 200 new books.  My main focuses were on informational, higher level and high interest series. We took time yesterday to look at them and label them as a class.  It was a great activity and all of the students found books that they are very excited to read!!  We will be working on than you notes this week to send to all of our donors.

Books, Books, Books!!!

Happy October!

Don't forget that tonight is WatchDog information night at 6:00.  Picture day is also tomorrow so please remember to send the order forms with your child if you plan on ordering pictures.