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:
Monday – Wear red!
Tuesday – Be on a drug free team – wear your favorite “team” shirt.
Wednesday – Socktober – Wear a pair of crazy socks; share a pair of socks – donate a pair or package of socks to the People’s City Mission. Drop off your donations in the office by Friday, October 30.
Thursday – Follow your dreams-stay drug free – wear pajamas appropriate for school and outside recess.
Friday – Think of all you want to be and stay drug free – dress up in clothing that you may wear in your future career.
