Lighting up the holidays with circuits and cheer!

Electromagnets

Penguin Ornaments

12/15-12/23

This week's update will include the next two weeks, since they consist of only seven days together.  Our class will be visiting our school's Toys for Tots store on Thursday, December 18th.  If interested, they may bring money in to purchase items.  All proceeds go to our local Toys for Tots!

Please have bowling permission slips with payment in by Friday.

Here is what we will be busy with in the upcoming weeks...

Language Arts:

New reading logs went home and are due next Friday, December 19th.

Students are continuing to work towards the goal of being at 13 books completed by January 9th. 

Comprehension- We will be focusing on one of our more difficult informational text skills which is text structure.  This examines how the text is built or organized.  

Vocabulary- Suffixes: ful, less, ness, meant

Word Study- New lists were written into agendas Thursday and they will be tested on them Thursday, December 18th.  Please encourage your students to be sorting their words by patterns and sounds at home to prepare and learn.

Students bring they corrected tests home each week.  Please make sure your student is sharing these so that you can see their progress!

Writing- Will be introducing opinion writing and writing an opinion piece on our favorite holidays or celebrations. 

Grammar- Modal Auxiliary Verbs (must, shall, can, will, may, should, could, would, might)  We will be learning about in which contexts different ones should be used in our writing.  

Science:

We will be wrapping up electricity and moving on to magnetism.  Ask you child how they did building their own electric circuits this week!  After the holiday break our class will be transitioning to Mr. Krupa for Social Studies.  

Math: They will be continuing with unit 4.  Please remember and utilize the fantastic sites Mr. Krupa has on his blog for practice!

12/8-1212

Thanks for your feedback on how you would like to receive our weekly updates.  I will continue to copy the information into the email as well so that everyone has easy access to it.  

Bowling permission slips went home this week.  Please sign and return them with payment by December 19th.  We will not need chaperones for this even, however, you are invited to join us there if you have had your background check completed.  

I apologize for the length of this update as there is a lot to cover this week:)

Here is what we will be up to next week...

Language Arts: 

New reading logs went home today and are due next Friday.  Students are expected to be at 13 books finished by the January 9th PATH reward to be on track for their goal.  Students who are currently behind have blue plans to catch up stapled into their agendas.  Parent encouragement and support on the completion of this is very appreciated.  My hope is that we have everyone caught up and on track when we return from the holiday break.  

Comprehension:  Our comprehension skill of the week is text and graphic features.  This includes things such as graphs, tables, pictures, timelines, glossaries, bold/italics and titles.  Fourth graders must be able to recognize these features and be able to analyze why it was included in the text and how it helped their understanding of the topic.

Grammar: Relative Pronouns- This involves using the proper forms of who vs. whom.  

Vocabulary Words of the Week: transfer, transport, obstacle, excess

Vocabulary Strategy: Antonyms (opposites)

Word Study:  As I mentioned in my previous message, there has been a change to our word study schedule.  We will now be on a Thursday to Thursday schedule.  Students were given new word lists and ideas for pattern sorting in class yesterday.  They will be tested on these patters next Thursday as well as get their new words/patterns.  Please continue to encourage your child to be looking at the patterns they are noticing within the words.  Doing word sorts at home is a more valuable practice than simply memorizing.  Your child knows and has practiced many types of sorts that may be repeated at home.  

Science:  This week we introduced reading from textbooks and how to find the information we need.  Next week we will be continuing electricity and construction our own electrical circuits!

Math

In our math classes next week, we will continue naming and measuring angles and classifying triangles by their angles and sides. Terms that we are learning and reviewing are acute, obtuse, isosceles, scalene, and equilateral. In addition, we will use transformations to prove congruency and extend patterns to identify repetition using shapes and numbers. Please continue to memorize the division facts so you are able to solve division problems with remainders. There are many websites listed on my blog to help your child improve their fluency score and meet their math log goals.  http://krupafourthgrade.blogspot.com

Upcoming Dates to Remember:

Unity Day (wear orange)- December 10th

Bowling Fieldtrip Slip Due- December 19th

Bowling Fieldtrip-December 23rd

Winter Break- December 24th -January 2nd

Back to School- January 5th