Ms. Birdsall's Blog

This is a big week in 4th grade, we begin our NeSA Testing. I have no doubt that we are ready to show all of the hard work we have put in this year!  Students will take the Reading test this week on Wednesday and Thursday. We will do Math next week on Wednesday and Thursday.

Math

This week we will finish Chapter 23 Probability. The Chapter test is on Thursday. Next we will be doing a chapter that reviews skills from 3rd and 4th grade. There are only a few more weeks for students to show they have mastered their multiplication and division facts. It is important for students to keep practicing.

Writing

This month we are working on Biography Research. Students have picked a person to research. We will be practicing research strategies as well as report writing. Students will write a biography on their chosen individual as well as make a google slides presentation.

Reading

We are learning Unit 6 Week 2 skills this week. Our objectives include: historical fiction, rereading, homophones, theme and adverbs. There is a Scholastic due this Friday as well as a Spelling Test. There will be no weekly reading test due to the NeSA.

 Unit Studies

We are in Social Studies through next week, April 22nd.

Our room has some exciting news, we have a student teacher this semester her name is Jessica Yoesel. She is a senior from UNL. She will be with us through April. I am sure your child will have lots to share with you about her.

Math

We will be starting Chapter 14 and 15 this week about Organizing and Graphing Data.  We will have the District Common Assessment in Math on Wednesday so there will not be homework. The test for this chapter will be Wednesday the 20th.

Writing

This week will bring our Test Prep Unit for the State Writing Test.  The test will be on Wednesday, January 27th and Thursday January 28th.

Reading

We begin Unit 4 this week. This unit’s big question is: How do different writers treat the same topic?  Week 1 will focus on the following skills: cause and effect, narrative nonfiction, latin roots, ask and answer questions, pronouns and spelling with inflectional endings.  Our tests will start to be on Fridays this quarter so expect spelling tests and weekly tests on Fridays. Scholastic will continue as well book reports.

Unit Studies

We will start a new rotation in Unit Studies. Science this quarter will be Space!

Upcoming Dates

Friday, 18th – Awards at 2:45

Tuesday, 26th – PLC Day dismiss at 2:15

Parent Teacher Conferences – Thursday, January 28th and Tuesday, February 2nd

 Math

We started Chapter 8 – Understanding Division. The test for this chapter is on Friday, Nov 20th. The results of Chapter 7 will come home tomorrow, hopefully stapled in their planners if they remember to bring them to school. 🙂  Keep practicing math facts. It is becoming very obvious on tests that it math fact knowledge that is holding students back. They are doing all the correct steps in a problem, but missing the basic fact.

 Writing

We have finished our first process piece for personal narratives and have now begun our second cycle. We continue to take small moments and turn them into well developed stories with details to create a picture for your reader. Your child took a writing prompt and wrote for two 40min periods to a given topic. The scores of these pieces of writing will come home tomorrow, also stapled in their planners.

 Reading

This week we will finish Unit 3 Week 1 on Wednesday with our weekly test and spelling test. Our class continues to improve our weekly class average on this test. Ask your child what our new goal is!!  On Thursday we will begin Week 2 with the following skills:  visualization, vocabulary context clues, point of view, realistic fiction, verb tenses (past, present, future), and the spelling skill of silent letters. Our essential question will be: In what ways can you help your community?  Today students should have brought home their Unit 3 meaningful sentence vocabulary test. Tomorrow coming home: Unit 3 test results.

 Unit Studies

Due to a computer conflict, we took the Prairie DCA today. I will get results home with students by the end of the week. They get their results immediately so they too should be able to tell you how they did.  Today our homeroom began their rotation with Miss Vercellino in Social Studies.

We had a busy week in 4th grade! This week I brought some changes to our classroom that I hope your child already shared with you. We watched several short videos this week all about doing your best and giving your best effort. You can look up the videos we watched on YouTube; Kid President brought us inspiration as well as Cross the Line. My hope with this is to inspire the students to always give their best which in turn will help them learn and achieve even more. We will continue to implement new classroom procedures that will support this. The first two procedures we implemented began onTuesday. An Effort Scale now hangs on the wall; it is a 1-5 scale with 5 being the most effort possible. I gave the analogy of running a race with 1 being sitting on the curb and not trying and 5 being preparing for the race, running the race the best they can, and finishing the race. The second new procedure is a half sheet that will start coming home at the end of each math test. Each day we will record on this half sheet two things: how well they are understanding the objective (called: buzz timer because I have a timer go off throughout the lesson to remind us to check how well we are understanding the objective) and the effort they gave during that time.  Then they will record their homework score on each objective and finally their math test scores. These will get stapled into their planners. PLEASE look at these with your child. Your encouragement will be priceless. One thing to remember, effort is not getting everything right or being the best, it is the hard work we put it.

   This coming week is Red Ribbon Week. Our entire school will be participating in activities to support staying drug free. Each day there will be a theme for the day and students are encouraged to dress up in the different categories. I have typed in the categories below. There was also a pink sheet that came home on Friday with the themes.

One more celebration before the weekly objectives –  Our class set the goal of increasing our weekly test score from 75% to 77% on the test last Wednesday and increased to 84%! A big celebration in hard work!!

Math

We continue to work on Chapter 6: Multiplication of 1-digit numbers with one more lesson on Monday. The test for this chapter will be on Tuesday.  We will then begin Chapter 7:Multiply 2-digit numbers. Please keep working on math facts at home. It is SO important to have those memorized. Look for their half-sheet with information about their effort and results on from the chapter 6 test.

Writing

Our first personal narrative will come to an end this week on Wednesday. We have worked hard on taking our first story through the writing process.Thursday and Friday will bring the writing prompt for the end of this cycle to check learning and next steps for learning.

Reading

Wednesday will be our Week 5 tests.The weekly required homework, Scholastic News, will be due on Wednesday this week. The Unit 2 assessments will be next week on Tuesday the 3rd and Wednesday the 4th. We will again have the 10 word vocabulary sentence writing assessment. There will be no spelling list coming home on Thursday.

Unit Studies

We remain in Science learning about Prairies this week. The DCA for this will be on Friday, Nov 6th.

Upcoming Dates:

Tuesday, Oct 27th – PLC Day
Wednesday, Nov 4th – Picture Re-take

RED RIBBION THEMES:

Thanks to each of you that came to Parent/Teacher Conferences. It is so wonderful to get to have time to talk about your child. You are a key part in their education.  This week is going to bring a few changes in reading due to the plan day on Friday and fall break. After reading this, if you have questions please let me know!

Reading

 This week we finish our Week 2 skills with our weekly test and spelling test on Wednesday the 7th.  Starting Thursday we will begin a combined week 3 and week 4 set of objectives.  We will focus on vocabulary context clues, vocabulary prefixes, main idea and key details, and summarizing. Our spelling will be the week 4 skill of prefixes. The test for this combined week will be Wednesday, October 21st. Starting this week we will also begin sending home Scholastic News on Wednesdays and have them due on Wednesdays. One of our goals in 4th grade is to improve students’ comprehension in the area of main idea. Some students will be bringing home an extra sheet stapled to their Scholastic to practice the skill of main idea. If your child is one of these students, it means they are not passing the main idea objective and need to practice. It too will be due onWednesday with the rest of the Scholastic.

This month the book report genres are either History or Historical Fiction. This does mean they have the option of reading a non-fiction text. If that is the case their book report could summarize what they learned.

Writing

 We have started personal narratives. Your child will be writing stories on small moments in their lives.  You can expect a rubric to come home todaywith their Pre-Assessment score.

Math

This week we will continue working on Chapter 5: Algebraic Reasoning. The test for this chapter will be on Tuesday the 13th. We will then take our first District Common Assessment on Wednesday 14th. There is no studying for this DCA, it is testing students on how much they remember from the first few chapters of math this year.

Unit Studies 

We will finish this rotation of unit studies on Wednesday the 14th. When they return from fall break we will start Science again!

Upcoming Dates

Friday, Oct 9th – NO SCHOOL/PLAN DAY

Saturday, Oct 10th – Pumpkin Run at Pioneers Park

Thursday and Friday 16th and 17th – NO SCHOOL FALL BREAK

Tuesday, Oct 27 – PLC day release at 2:18

Good Evening!

 Parent/Teacher Conferences are next week. A few of you still need to sign up for conferences. You can do so by calling school or emailing me.  The 30th is also our first field trip to Pioneers Park and the Prairie Immersion Experience.  Your child is encouraged to wear pants and tennis shoes and even long sleeves on the trip since we will be walking through tall grasses; they can also wear hats if they would like. A note came home Friday giving you information as well as asking if your child will be bringing lunch or taking one from school. Please return this to school tomorrow.  Wednesday will also be picture day. I have told students they can wear their picture outfit and change into prairie clothes if needed. I suggested wearing jeans or pants and tennis shoes and just bring a change of shirts for after the picture.

Book reports are also due on the 30th. Students should be finishing their science fiction or fantasy book and writing their 3 paragraph review.  Outlines for this report have been sent home but copies are on my blog on the reading page.  Students who choose to type their report and can’t print it at home can do so on Google Docs with their LPS password and share it with me, or can email it to me and I will print it.

READING

This week brings our Unit Test in Reading. The test will consist of 2 reading passages, 20 comprehension and vocabulary questions, 1 constructed response and 10 questions in grammar.  There will also be an assessment of their learning of the unit vocabulary words. Students will be expected to write a sentence that uses the word and shows meaning of the word for 10 different words. These words can be found on the blog as well as the weekly spelling sheets that have been coming home. We are doing review in class as well. Expect to see a review packet on Tuesday of the weekly grammar skills to review as well.  There is no spelling this week.  On Thursday, we will begin Unit 2 Week 1 with new skills and new spelling words.  This unit is called: Amazing Animals. The essential question is: What are some messages in animal stories?  The skills are: folktale, theme, root words, ask/answer questions, common and proper nouns, and spelling prefixes.

 Writing

This week is our Research and Inquiry week. We will be researching about natural disasters and then writing and presenting Newscasts. This should be a really fun week in writing!

Math

We will finish Chapter 4 with basic multiplication and division facts this week. The test will be on Friday.  Keep practicing math facts!!

Unit Studies

This is the final week in Social Studies with Miss Vercellino.

Upcoming Dates

With the first week under our belts, I wanted to send you the first weekly update!  It was a great first week. We spent some time getting to know each other and building a community. My hope is that you child feels safe and ready to learn. We heard updates about strings from the new music teacher at Lakeview, Jennifer Danner. If your child is wanting to participate in strings, they should have brought home a form for you to sign to get them an instrument. Please let me know if you have questions about that!

Each week I will try and send an update with things to expect in the week to come. If you ever have questions, please don’t hesitate to email me back, or give me a call at school.

Math

We are learning the objectives in Chapter 1: Place Value. Our test for this will be on Friday, August 21st. This will mean there will be no homework next weekend in math. Math facts will become a part of the 4th grade objectives. The 4th grade expectation is that students learn their basic multiplication and division facts and demonstrate that understanding by scoring at least 45/50 in 3 minutes on a timed fact test. We will be starting those timed tests soon. Check out my blog for internet resources as well as the homework for the chapter we are on. If your child forgets their homework, you can print it at home.

Unit Studies

Our homeroom class will begin Science this week. Our first unit is Ecosystems. The District Common Assessment or DCA will be on Friday, September 5th.

Reading and Spelling

This coming week we will be starting Unit 1 Week1. Each week we will have an Essential Question that we try to answer. This week’s question is: Where do good ideas come from?  Our stories will all be Fairy Tales.  This week’s skills are: making predictions, sequencing, synonyms and types of sentences.  To start the year off right, we are going to take the weekly test this week as a class. You will not get a score at home since it will be done together. 4th grade will be testing on Wednesdays this quarter. This will including spelling tests. This first week we will not have words go home. We will be giving a placement spelling test to see which list is the best fit for your child (approaching level, on level, or beyond level). Words will come home on Thursday for next week’s spelling test that will take place onWednesday, August 26th.  Each week we will also have 8 new vocabulary words that you child is responsible to learn. These words are posted on the blog; some practice will take place at school, but it will be good to practice at home as well. This year there will be weekly reading homework in the form of Scholastic News. We will also have monthly book reports due, starting in September.

Writing

This week we will finish our Launch Unit that is preparing the students for writing personal narratives. 4th grade is a big year in writing. Tomorrow your child will be asked to bring a special object or photo that reminds them of a story they can write. We take the Nebraska State Accountability Writing test at the end of January. Before we begin preparation for that assessment, we will do a unit on analytical writing or writing to answer questions about a text.

Upcoming Events

Tuesday, Aug 25th – First PLC Day – Students dismiss at 2:18

September 29th and October 1st – Parent Teacher Conferences (please call the office to sign up for a conference if you have not yet done so)

Wednesday, September 30th – Pioneers Park Field Trip – parents are encouraged to join us – be sure to fill out the Volunteer Form at LPS Volunteer (on the LPS homepage)