Mallen's Monday Memo December 10, 2012

Monday Memo

December 12, 2011

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Just a reminder that with snow comes the need for snowpants and boots… It really helps them not have wet clothes all day and it helps keep our carpet from getting so wet. I have just a few reminders for this week. The Christmas program is on Thursday at 4:00. I will be with the kids in the vocal music room after the program. I will have a check out sheet that I am required to have you sign to take your children home. Thanks for doing that for us. The dress rehearsal is at the high school on Wednesday at 1:00. We have been doing a great job with food for the food pantry. Please keep sending it as it is a wonderful way for the kids to feel the giving in Christmas. Thank-you for helping them to “Pay it Forward”. Today is our first day of talking about what they did to help others. It really is fun to hear all they are doing. If you care to send $2.00 for the cheer fund, that would be great, and I need to get the money to them by December 18^th. Thanks for all you are doing to help our class continue to understand the power of giving. We will be going to the care center on Friday to play Christmas Jingo with our friends. It is such a joy to go there. This will also be my last Monday Memo until 2013. Thank-you for all you do in helping me help your children to be the best students they can be!

We are continuing our “Amazing Stories” theme. This week we will be reading a story entitled “Heat Wave”. It is an interesting story of weather gone wild. We will be working on comprehension and vocabulary, fantasy/realism, and comparing and contrasting the stories in this theme. Our grammar lessons are on the past, present and future tenses. Our spelling words all end in ed or ing. We will be working on our centers and small group this week as well.

In Math, we have started on Chapter 4. The students did a fantastic job with their Chapter 3 tests! I sent those home last Wednesday. Our Chapter 4 is about time, charts and graphs. I think they will do very well. We will continue having periodic timed multiplication tests, so keep working on those facts at home. Most are doing very well!! Our daily “buckets” are also one of my favorite things they do each day as it really reinforces everything we have been learning!

I am planning to give the Science test over the systems of the body, on Friday. If they just study their study guides, they should do very well. We are also finishing our first chapter over the Southeastern Region of the United States. Next week I am hoping for us to test over that before we leave.

Thank-you ahead of time to our room mothers for putting a Christmas party together with our kids. The party is planned for Wednesday, December 19^th at 12:45. Our room mothers for this party are Deserae’s mother and Maria’s mother. Thanks so much for your time and talent! The kids really appreciate it and have so much fun!! Just a reminder that it is an early dismissal day for our teacher inservice.

I wish everyone a wonderful Christmas and I hope everyone has a relaxing break!!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  (Home):  444-3093   (School):  444-4300 ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo December 3, 2012

Monday Memo

December 3, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! We finished our American Stories unit last week and are starting on our new unit “That’s Amazing”. We ended our unit by performing a play for each other. The students were divided into two “teams” and each had to decide who was the director, narrator and the actors. It was fun watching them perform! I also wanted to thank-you for responding to my email about how you wanted your child to get home after the Christmas program. The 4^th grade will be in the vocal music room, so plan to sign your child out at that location.

Going  back to reading, as I said above, we will be starting a new unit. Our first story is entitled “The Stranger”. It is an interesting story that is written by the author of The Polar Express. His name is Chris Van Allsburg. We will be working on such skills this week as noting details, compound words, synonyms, and writing an explanation.  Our spelling words are attached and are compound words. Our grammar this week  is introducing us to action verbs.

In Math this week, we will be finishing up our Chapter 3 over multiplication and division. We will be working on the book test and the chapter test and should be starting Chapter 4 next week. I will talk about that chapter in the next Monday Memo.

We are working on the Southeastern Region of the United States. We have talked about the Mississippi River and its importance to the development of the Southeastern Region. The warm weather and the cash crops grown in this region were also discussed. We will be discussing the resources found in this region this week also.

In Science we are finishing our discussion of the systems of the body. We talked about the skeletal, muscular, circulatory and respiratory systems last week. We will finish this week by talking about the nervous, digestive, and excretory  systems. It is so interesting to talk about this marvelous machine  that is our body.

For Christmas this year, I would like to have the students do a

“Pay it Forward” concept. With that, if the students could think of a way to help

a neighbor, friend, relative… They could scoop a sidewalk for someone, send

a Christmas card to anyone including their nursing home friends, they could

bake some cookies (with your permission of course) and give those to

anyone, write letters or stories to give as gifts, spend an hour or so visiting

with an elderly person that maybe doesn’t get visitors very often… The list

goes on. On Mondays, we have Share Day. For the month of December, our

Share Day will consist of them talking about the ways they have tried to “Pay

It Forward”. Hopefully they can see that doing things like this aren’t monetary

but  require them to give of themselves.

We are also going to have a food pantry drive as a school. We are going to start collecting food items, consumable items… There is a contest between the classes for the class that collects the most items. It is just a small incentive to continue our holiday tradition of giving at Christmas time at Jacobson Elementary. You can send these food pantry items anytime before December 14^th. Thank-you in advance for that.

Lastly, instead of buying Christmas gifts for each other, if you would like to send $2.00 with your child to school, we will donate the money to the Belmond Cheer Fund. That is a truly wonderful organization. I will match the contribution made by the students.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (Home)  444-4300 ext. 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo November 26, 2012

Monday Memo

November 26, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a nice, relaxing, long break!! It is so hard to believe we are looking at Christmas already! The students did a great job performing Thanksgiving poems and doing some activities with their new friends at the Belmond Rehabilitation Center! They are so good to us and once again I encourage the students to go sometime after school and visit their new friends. We finished our Science and Social Studies tests before the break and the results were sent home with your child. We are really moving along in our curriculum! We had a little fun reading some Thanksgiving stories and then creating sequence posters over the stories. I also sent those home with the students.

This week, we are finishing our “American Stories” theme in reading. We will be working on the genre of a play that comes from the story Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Having already read the book and an excerpt from the book has really helped them know the characters. I have given the students a book to have read by Friday. Some of them are reading  a Judy Blume book entitled Fudge a Mania and some had already read some of her books and are reading a Sharon Creech book. I will be giving them another RC book next week to have read before the Christmas break. This week we will be doing some more reviewing in grammar over using details with nouns. Our spelling words are homonyms, again, which are hard for the students to understand the different meanings of the words. For the play, we will be working on vocabulary over “play” words, and some work on set direction, setting, etc. (elements of a play). Our guided reading books covered these elements as well.

For Math, we are already finishing up on our multiplication/division chapter. Next week we will be testing over it. This week we are working on problem solving with multiplication and division and we are doing some more algebra. That is so fun for the kids to be able to say they are doing! I still have a couple of students that really need to work on their multiplication facts. Most are doing a great job!! It just will help them so greatly for our future math lessons.

We are starting on the Northeast Region of the United States this week. If you have vacationed there or have any experience with that region of the states, please feel free to send any pictures, brochures, travel guides… The students love hands on things!! With Science, we are also starting a new chapter over the systems of the body. We will be talking about the skeletal, muscular, respiratory and circulatory systems of the body. We don’t go into depth about them, but we do introduce them to these vital systems that help our body work together.

As always, please feel free to call/email with any questions or concerns. I want to add again how thankful I am to have such an amazing class!!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (Home)  444-4300 ext 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo November 12, 2012

Monday Memo

November 12, 2012

Dear Parents,

          I hope everyone had a great weekend! I am excited that we are headed to the Belmond Rehabilitation Center on Friday. We are going to perform some Thanksgiving poems for them and we are going to do some fun activities with them as well. We are so fortunate to have them as our adopt a business!!

          This week in Math, we are well into our multiplication chapter. The students are doing a fantastic job with it!! They just have to make sure they know their multiplication facts and that will help them in math from this point on. Working on our daily math “buckets” is also a great reinforcer of all of the math skills they have been introduced to. It is such a great way to prepare for the spring Iowa Assessments!!

          I will be sending home a study guide for Science on Tuesday. The test will be on Wednesday. I will be sending a Social Studies study guide home with the students on Thursday, for that test to be on Friday. This is our last week of working on the Southwest Region of the United States. Our Science chapter has been talking about plants and their needs, adaptations and they ways they can reproduce.

          For reading this week, we will be ending the “American Stories” unit. We will be reading two stories this week. One is on Emilia Earhart and one is on Duke Ellingston. We will be working on comprehension, vocabulary and reviewing the skills we learned this unit. The students will be working on an end of the unit skill’s test this week. This will help us see how the students are retaining what they are learning during our skill’s test. The spelling list with the week’s list is attached.

          We finished our essays that we wrote for a contest held annually by the local VFW. The topic this year was “What is your favorite branch of the military”. The essays have been turned in and are being judged in the near future.

          As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions/concerns!

Have a great week!!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (Home)   444-4300 ext. 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

         

Mallen's Monday Memo November 6, 2012

Monday Memo

November 6, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I want to thank our room mothers, Mrs. Gabrielson, Mrs. Lane and Mrs. Dougherty for the absolutely wonderful Halloween party they put on for us on Halloween!! They did a great job and the kids had a marvelous time!! We also went to the Belmond Care Center prior to the parade, to show off our costumes for them. They were so kind to give each of the kids a Halloween treat as well!! We are a lucky group of fourth graders!!

I gave each of the kids a copy of the book Lucky Charms and Birthday Wishes. This book needs to be read by November 15. Many have it done already. It is just a fun book on friendship and also has a lot of holiday themes in it, which makes it kind of fun this time of year! We finally got to go to the library this week. It had been closed due to the book fair. Once the kids are done with the above book, they can read their library RC book. I will have another selection in a different genre for them the 15^th of November, but once the above book is read, they can read their own choice book. For reading this week we are reading a selection entitled “A Very Important Day”. We will be doing skills on comprehension, decoding words, reading a newspaper article, vocabulary skills, and words with multiple meanings this week. Our guided reading books will be focusing on sequencing this week. Our centers will have us doing a vocabulary activity, scrambling some spelling sentences and writing a journal entry. We will also incorporate our SRA into this week. Our hope is to get three done this week.

For Math, we are starting our new chapter on multiplication. Knowing their multiplication facts will make this chapter a breeze. We do a lot of multiplication processes within this chapter. Knowing the facts will make this very easy.  We are doing our daily review (Bucket)  each day that has them doing skills they have learned in the past. This is a great way to remember past skills.

In Science the students will be finishing up our unit on plant needs and adaptations. Next week we should be ready to test. Stay tuned to the Monday Memo as to when the study guide will be coming home. For Social Studies, we are finishing up with our Southwest Region of the United States. We should be ready to test over that next week as well. Again, stay tuned to the Monday Memo for when that study guide will be coming home with them.

The spelling list is attached to this memo. Just a reminder that we have an early out on Wednesday. If you have any questions/concerns, please feel free to call.

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:   (Home)  444-3093   (School)  444-4300 ext. 337

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo October 29, 2012

Monday Memo,

October 29, 2012

Dear Parents,

                I hope everyone had a nice, long weekend! It was a pleasure visiting with you at conferences. I want to let you know that our fall party is on Oct. 31^st with the parade at 2:00.

                We will begin a story entitled “Boss of the Plains” this week. This story is our third story in the “American Stories” unit. We will be doing vocabulary, and comprehension skills over this story and we will be working on writing a business letter. Our grammar lessons this week are working on more plural nouns. Our spelling words this week have some controlled r sounds and are attached to this memo. Our guided reading stories are stories about the Plains. Our centers this week will have us working on reading a vocabulary story and answering some comprehension questions over this story, correcting a misspelled paragraph and writing it correctly, and working on setting up a business letter appropriately. Just a reminder for the students to keep reading their “Bound for Oregon” chapter each night. The library was closed last week due to the Book Fair, so we will get there tomorrow to get another RC book to read once that chapter is finished.

                In Math,we will be working on problem solving applications, our diagnostic review of the chapter, our book chapter test and our “official” chapter test. On Friday, we will be playing a mental math game called “Randy Raccoon” and we will play some math games.

                As I spoke at conferences, we will be starting the DOGS (Daily Oral Geography) today. Just a reminder that they have to be handed in by Friday, have their names on it, and have all of the questions correct, to be in our weekly drawing. They may use any resources they have to answer the geography questions. Their social studies book is a huge reference. The back of the book has a lot of maps they will need.

                As always, please feel free to call or email me with any questions/concerns.

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Phone:  Home:   444-3093   School:  444-4300 ext. 336

Mallen's Monday Memo October 8, 2012

Monday Memo

October 8, 2012

I hope everyone had a great weekend! We enjoyed our Iowa’s Healthiest State walk on Wednesday. It was a beautiful day! We had an assembly right after that to talk about assembly etiquette. Today we are having a pep assembly to celebrate Homecoming week. The 7-12^th graders came over to make it a school wide assembly. I have attached the dress-up things we have going this week at Jacobson for Homecoming week.

This week in reading we will be starting our new theme, Adventure Stories.  Our first story is Tomas and the Library Lady.  Your child is reading an Encyclopedia Brown book and they will need to be finished and tested on it by October 18^th. In our small reading groups we each will be reading American Short stories that I believe your child will enjoy.  This week we will be working on a grammar bucket, comprehension, dictionary skills and short stories. We are going to work on proper nouns, synonyms, antonyms and homophones in Language Arts. Last week we focused on the genre of mystery stories and we read an Encyclopedia Brown book as a class. We did a number of activities over the story, throughout our RTI time.

For math this week will be working on solving equations, number expressions, 3 ways of computation, and patterns. They will continue working on multiplication sheets and their bucket for review. We will also do some review of our 3 column addition and subtraction problems.  Please work with your child with the multiplication facts.  This will help them greatly if they have these memorized.

In Science we are continuing with animal adaptations and behaviors. We will be testing over this unit on Friday. Look for the study guide to come home with the students Thursday night.

Social Studies will be working on the Southwestern Region. I hope to send a study guide home with your child Tuesday night, with the test on Wednesday.

I sent a note home to the parents who agreed to help plan our parties this year. If you did not receive one, and had expressed an interest in planning one, let me know and I will send a note home with your child. Thank-you again for your time and effort!!

Have a great week!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Mallen's Monday Memo October 1, 2012

Monday Memo

October 1, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! This week has a couple of interesting events in store for us. On Wednesday at 9:00 our school will be participating in the Iowa Healthiest State initiative. We will be meeting at the front of our building and walking the trail. You are more than welcome to join us. There will be other community members walking with us. That afternoon at 1:00, the students will be listening to a 4H presentation. They will be invited to join their organization. Information will be given to them at the meeting. We also dismiss early on Wednesday, so it is definitely going to be an interesting day!

This  week  we will be continuing on finishing up with our Journeys theme. We will be reading about a child that actually gets mailed to a relative in “Parcel Post Kid” and we will be reading about an adventure a cricket has with a bird, in the story “Chester Cricket”. Both stories provide the characters with a unique adventure or “journey”. We will be writing journey stories too this week. We will also be working on the following skills:  Comprehension, vocabulary, comparing and contrasting stories. Our grammar skills this week will all be reviewing what we learned this past few weeks: Sentence Kind, subjects and predicates, common nouns, and using nouns in a series. Our spelling words are review words and are attached to this memo.

In Science we are continuing on animal adaptations and behaviors. This is a much shorter unit in Science, so we will already be working on the review this week. For Social Studies, we will be working on the Southwestern Region of the United States. This week the focus will be on working with latitutde and longitude and talking about the need for water and the availability of oil in the region.

In Math we will be starting our second chapter. I have the results of the first test in math in their folders for parent/teacher conferences. Our first lesson will be on using mental math when adding numbers. We will then use mental math when subtracting numbers. We will be estimating sums and differences this week. On Friday we will talk about over and under estimates for problem solving.

This week we are going to try to start using our typing agent which is located on our web site. If a student wants to try it at home, it is set up with their name and they can work on it at home. I will be showing them their password this week. Hopefully it will work okay. Sometimes there are a few glitches with the program, but we will see how it goes. Hopefully you can access it from home once we get going on it. It is an individualized program, so it will take them from where they left off.

As always, call with any questions/concerns!

Have a great week!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (Home)   444-4300 ext. 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Monday Memo

September 24, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Just a couple reminders to send back the room parent volunteer sheets as soon as you can. I will be making a list to send home with the kids telling who will be coordinating which party… I thank-you so much in advance for giving of your time and effort towards putting on a party for the kids!! With that, just a reminder to send $2.00 with your children towards the parties.

This week and next week we will be finishing up on our Journey’s unit. We will be reading two stories this week. One of the stories is entitled The Earthenware Pig.  The other is a series of short mysteries from other countries. This secton of our reading series focuses on the genre of mystery storiesThe students will be working on comparing and contrasting the two stories. They will also work on the vocabulary for each story. We will be reviewing some of those skills we went through, throughout the unit. Those skills will include guide words, abc order, syllabication and the author’s thoughts. We will be writing a story this week about a make-believe journey the students want to go on. We will also have our center time which will have us reviewing some grammatical skills, reading a vocabulary book and answering questions over it, and they will be working on Successmaker in the computer lab. In grammar, we will be reviewing their grammar skills from the unit. They will also be having their first review list of spelling words, from the unit. . We will be reading an Encyclopedia Brown book next week as well to finish our unit on Journeys. Our Laura Ingalls Wilder books are due to be tested on October 1^st. Thanks for making sure they are reading those.

In Math, the students will be finishing up on their first unit. They did an amazing job with counting back change!! Have them show you at home what they can do. Our first test will be this week. I am not sure which, day as it will depend on how much we get done. We will also be doing our daily reviews. Remember to keep having them practice those multiplication facts. Some are doing much better while others really need to work on them.  I thank-you for helping them at home with those!!

In Science, we are starting our new unit over animal growth and adaptations.  The students usually really enjoy this interesting unit. I have their wonderful tests in their file to share with you at conference time.

In Social Studies, we will be starting our regions of the United States. We will start with the Southwest Region. If you have any brochures or artifacts from this region, please send them with your child to share with us on Mondays.

We will be having some periodic drills this week. They include a fire, tornado and intruder drill. I wanted to let you know in case the children mentioned any of the above. We had a brief talk as to why it was important to practice drills for all emergencies.

It is amazing how quickly time is flying. This will be our last week in September. I have the kids move their desks the beginning of each month and that seems to be kind of exciting for them to have new kids to work with. I can honestly say that these kids are absolutely a joy to teach and I just want you to know thatJ

As always, call with any questions/concerns!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  (Home):  444-3093   (School) 444-4300 ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us 

Mallen's Monday Memo September 17, 2012

                                                                             Monday Memo

                                                                           September 17, 2011

Dear Parents,

 I hope everyone had a great weekend! Just a reminder that the book orders are due today but I will place the order tomorrow if you are still wanting to order a book. We had a great time at the care center and I appreciate how very kind and caring the students were while we were there. They always treat us so well and they won prizes when they won bingo. Again, I was so proud of the students!!

This week in reading we are reading a chapter from a Laura Ingalls Wilder book entitled “By the Shores of Silver Lake”. I will be having the students read a Laura Ingalls Wilder book once they have passed their quiz over the Judy Blume book. I am so impressed that so many of the students have read over 4 Judy Blume books! That is so impressive!! The Laura Ingalls Wilder books are a little bit lengthy, but I like for them to have read and quizzed over at least one of them. Some of the skills we will be working on this week include:  Noting details, comprehension, vocabulary, taking notes, and guide words.  Our grammar lessons this week are over proper nouns. We have enjoyed watching excerpts from the old “Grammar Rocks” series. During spelling we will be working on words that are homophones. Their listening skills will be very important as it will depend on how the sentence uses the word as to how to spell the word. The list is attached to this memo. For centers this week, we will be doing a vocabulary center, writing a friendly letter, keyboarding, a language “bucket”, and computer lab for Successmaker. Our guided reading groups have us reading about the orphan train, talking about prairie dangers, and racing on the Mississippi River.

For Math this week, we will be working on counting money and the most important skill, counting back change. They will be working on a daily multiplication sheet as well as a daily math review. Thank-you for working with your child at home on this important skill and when possible, have your child make purchases with money and work on giving the correct change…  Please keep working on the multiplication facts at home as so many are struggling on their facts. It really will help them out so greatly, having those memorized, especially in the coming months!

We are finishing up on our social studies handbook this week. It seems that the students are enjoying the DOGS we do before social studies. They go right along with the lesson for the week. The students will be testing this week in Science. We are going to try to do the test on the prometheon board as a practice. The actual test will be tomorrow (Tuesday). A study guide will go home with the students tonight. The first test is the most difficult with a lot of vocabulary terms. We thought maybe having it on the board, would help prepare them for the actual test.

Just a reminder that the early out is on Wednesday.

As always, call with any concerns!

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (Home)  444-4300 ext. 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo September 10, 2012

Monday Memo

September 10, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend!! Although last week was a short week, the kids really got a lot accomplished and I am so proud of them for that! Today your children went to our adopt a business, which is the Belmond Rehabilitation Center! We love having them as part of our “family”. It is great for the students to develop relationships with our older generation. Today we went over and paired up with our new friends and played bingo. I think they had a great time. I always tell them that their job is to make their friend smile. I explained that for some of the residents, this might be their only visitor that week. We will be going monthly to visit our new friends. I encourage them to go over on their own time, with your permission of course, and visit their new friends.

This week we are reading one of the kid’s favorite stories. It is entitled The Titanic. We will be working on the skills of comprehension, vocabulary, thesaurus, and syllabication during our whole group reading time. During our guided reading time, we will be working on main idea. For grammar, we will be focused on writing complete sentences and compound sentences. In spelling, we will be working on words with the u sound. The list is attached to this memo.

Math this week will have us doing a review over what we have learned so far in this chapter. We will also be working on using the $ sign to understand decimals. Money and making change will be a big part of this week. This is an important skill that needs to be practiced throughout their life. We will be practicing it throughout the year by playing some money games during our math menu time, however, working on it at home, would really help them as well. With that, keep working on those multiplication facts. As I told them, it isn’t going away. They need to learn those in order to be successful with math for the rest of their school career. Thanks for helping them with that. We have 5 people now that are in our “Never Again Club” for having mastered the 5 minute multiplication timed test. We also work daily on our daily review that is awesome for preparing for the basic skills test!

We are going to be finishing up on our handbook activities with social studies and with our first chapter in Science. I will let you know in next week’s Monday Memo when a study guide will be coming home for their first test in Science. We will be starting on a region of the United States next week as well and I will share more in next week’s memo.

Reminder that book orders are due: Sept. 17^th

As always, call with any questions or concerns!!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  ext. 336 (School)   444-3093 (Home)

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo September 5, 2012

Monday Memo

(Tuesday) September 4, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great, relaxing, long weekend!! We were busy last week! I think the students have finally started settling into the 4^th grade routine and I know this is going to be an awesome year! Your children are incredibly kind to each other and they have adapted to our new building procedures very well!! We had our pictures taken last week as well. They looked so awesome with their nice clothes onJ Just a reminder that the book order is due the 15th.

For reading this week, we are going to be reading a story entitled Grandfather’s Journey. It is a great story and a great piece of realistic fiction for the kids! We will be working on a lot of skills this week . Some of them are: Comprehension, vocabulary, using ly and y correctly in words, using a word web, and journaling. For grammar, we are starting on subjects and predicates this week. They did an outstanding job of understanding the 4 kinds of sentences that we worked on last week. Our spelling words this week have the sounds of short and long I and short and long o. The list is attached to this memo. I have given all of the students a Judy Blume book that is at their lexile level. Some of the books are from the school library and some are from my library. That is the book they are to read 15 minutes a night and then test on. They also have library books that they can read at their leisure as well. I would like the Judy Blume book finished by September 15th. That gives them a goal of two books to read a month. One that I give them that each month is of a different genre (This month we have a fiction book) and then they can test on their library book for the 2^nd book (or more if they get more books read!) Thanks for your help with that! They have an incentive chart they fill out for each quiz passed over their book. Once they fill their incentive chart, they will receive a trip to the treasure box. They will then start a new chart.

Staying with reading, our K-6 is adopting a half hour period of time each day which we call RTI (Response to Intervention) time. It is from 10:30-11:00 for all grade levels. That is our guided reading time. Every other day we also have another teacher (For our class it is Mrs. Trampel) that takes a group for guided reading time. Our guided reading time focuses as it always has on:  Comprehension, Vocabulary and the Reading Strategy of the week. Along with the guided reading lesson, we are focusing on main idea. Every other day the students will be working on a main idea lesson along with the guided reading lesson. Every day they will be having guided reading. This is just another thing we are working on to increase our reading scores. I can’t say this enough, PLEASE continue having them read every night for at least 15 minutes! It is the BEST way to practice the skills we are learning!

Math this week has us working on rounding greater numbers, problem solving, reviewing what we have learned so far in our first chapter and understanding the dollar sign and decimal point. We are going to really get after those multiplication facts this week as well. Having them work at least 10 minutes a night on them, is such a great help! We are also doing our daily reviews that I call our “buckets”. This is something that is a great help to them in reviewing previously learned material. It is great for our ITBS tests as well!

Social Studies has had us doing some awesome things on the prometheon board. We have been working on the skills of using a map, understanding globes, looking at different kinds of maps and this week we are going to work on elevation maps, landform maps, and physical maps. We do some really neat daily oral geography activities to reinforce what we learned the time before. The games are another way we reinforce what we have read about, in a fun way!

In Science, we are finishing up on our first unit of animal classification. Ask your child to name the 5 kingdoms all living creatures are divided into. We have done some cool prometheon board activities over the concept of classification. We did a fun shoe activity as well other ways to classify shoes. Each science day we begin our lesson with a daily oral science lesson. We are currently working on one that explains why flowers have scents and different colors.  These are fun daily tasks to reinforce some important science concepts that are found on the ITBS. We alternate Science/Social Studies every other day.

Our library day is on Green 4 days, which this week is on Friday, if you can remind your child to return their library books that are due. I would also like to add that this year we have 20 minutes a day in the computer lab which has been another great way to reinforce previously learned concepts! If that day we are working on Successmaker, if they achieve 80% or greater on the lesson, they will mark a box on their incentive chart!! Once their line is filled, they will be able to pick a prize out of the treasure box.

As always, any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me! As I stated at conferences, I would prefer to be proactive as opposed to reactiveJ

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:   (Home) 444-3093  (School) 444-4300 ext 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo August 27, 2012

Monday Memo

August 21, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a wonderful summer! It definitely went by very quickly! This is the first of this year’s Monday Memos. Each Monday your child will take home a Monday Memo. It will include what we will be studying that week, any tests we may be having, and other things you may want to know. This memo is to inform you as to our year in a nutshell.

This year the students will be very busy. We are so fortunate to have a  wonderful reading series that incorporates spelling and grammar right into each unit. The students will have weekly spelling lists that will be attached to the Monday Memo. Their spelling tests will be on Fridays.  They will have daily grammar lessons as well. Each day the students will be in a guided reading group where they will meet for 20 minutes. During that time, the students will be reading in small groups, from a story that goes with the weekly theme. They will also be working on a skill each week, whether it is on prediction, inference…  Each unit has a writing activity as a component of the program. We will be working on that as well, so each student will have a piece of writing for you to see during our parent/teacher conferences.  The stories they will be reading in their anthology book are wonderful pieces of literature. Each student will also always have an RC book in a bag with them. They are to take these books home each night and bring them back in the morning. I ask that they read for at least 15 minutes each night. Practice is the best way to become a good reader and I would like to see them learn to read as a leisure activity for the rest of their life as well. If they get into the habit of reading daily at a young age, the chance is there that they will continue that habit. They will quiz over their RC books when finished reading. They have three opportunities to get 70% or better. Once they do that, they will receive a punch on their reading card that is hanging on the bulletin board.  I will also have this as one of their comprehension grades.  Our first theme is entitled “Journeys” and the focus is on the mystery genre. Each student is to read two RC books a month. To begin the year, all of the students are reading independently the same story Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. I think that book is a great way to start the new school year! Our reading period is around two hours a day.

Moving on to Math… In 4^th grade we expect the kids to have their multiplication facts memorized. We don’t have a lot of time to spend memorizing the facts as our curriculum moves us right along. Knowing those facts, however, is crucial to so many of the things we will be learning in math. Please help your child practice those facts each night. We will be taking occasional timed multiplication tests to keep track of their progress. It is just so very important for their future math years to have those memorized. Thanks for your help with that!! We have found the first two chapters in math to be probably the ones that are the trickiest. We spend our math time with a review activity, a fact sheet, a lesson, a math practice assignment and then if they get that done, we have a math menu board where they can choose from a variety of math review games to work on. Our math period is typically 60 minutes long.

Fitting in Science and Social Studies in our hectic schedule is always a challenge. We will be doing one or the other each day for about 45 minutes. For Science, we will be working on life science first. We will be learning about the importance of classifying living things. We will then get into such things as animal adaptations… Once we have completed our units in life science we will move to earth science and then we will finish the year with physical science. We try to do some experimenting each week but our primary focus is on learning new vocabulary words. Our science tests really want them to have a good understanding of the terms and concepts in science.  Our social studies begins with a map skills unit. We will be using a lot of hands on maps and our promethean boards to understand our place in the world.  Once we finish our preliminary unit on map skills, we will be learning about the different regions of the United States. If you have traveled to a region which we are studying and have any artifacts, brochures, pictures… you would like to share please feel free to send it with your child.

Speaking of sharing, every Monday is “Share Day”.  During the beginning of the day, we set aside a few minutes for the students to share whatever they would like to share with the class. That is a good time to share their artifacts from the above paragraph. They may bring whatever you are comfortable having them bring to share also. It is also a good opportunity for students to speak in front of the class and to become comfortable doing that as well as it being a good chance to really get to know each other.

My expectations of the students are simply that they respect the other students and that they respect me. I won’t tolerate any disrespect of either. If there is a situation I feel you need to be aware of, I will either email you or phone you. I also expect the students to do their homework and bring it back the next day. I don’t assign homework but if the students don’t get the work finished in the time allotted, that will be their homework. They will bring it home in a folder called their homework folder. If they don’t have their homework finished, they will be in at recess to finish it. There will be times when they will be in recess to relearn something I felt they didn’t grasp earlier in the day. Learning it in a small group setting sometimes makes it easier and hearing it a second time is sometimes all it takes to learn something new. So, if they are in at recess it typically isn’t for bad behavior, it is typically to get a second chance at learning something new. This is something our district will be doing on a daily basis as a way of making sure the students are understanding new concepts.

We enjoy celebrating each other’s birthdays. If you wish to send a treat, you are more than welcome. Please don’t feel you have to, it is just okay if you would like to.

I thank-you for the chance to work with your child this school year! I am huge on communication, so please feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email whenever you have any questions or concerns. I will always have my number and email address on the Monday Memo to refer to.

Here’s to a great school year!!

Chris Mallen

Phone:   (Home)  444-3093    (School)  444-4300 ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkscd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo February 13, 2012

Monday Memo

February 13, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! We had another busy week last week. Our book Harris and Me was due on Friday. I challenged the students that if they passed 4 RC quizzes during the month of February, I would give them a bag of popcorn. They are required to pass 2 for one of their comprehension grades. I have several who have already read and passed 4 quizzes. I love that motivation. We read a book at school from Andrew Clements entitled No Talking and on Thursday we challenged ourselves to follow the rules of that book. It was quite interesting. You could only say 3 words at a time and use gestures, sign language, nodding and notebook writing, to communicate. I think the kids had a lot of fun with that and realized that sometimes when you take the time to really think about what you want to say, you end up realizing that it really wasn’t that important to say. You actually spend more time listening and I thought that was an interesting lesson.

This week and next, we are at the end of our reading unit and will be working on two stories this week and on poems for next week. Our spelling words are review words this week and our grammar lessons are reviewing over the forms of the verb be and adjectives. We our reading some short stories about real individuals who solved some problems in their life, during our guided reading time. Our centers will also be reviewing previously learned concepts. We have an exciting addition to our classroom. You may remember the old SRA kits that you had as a kid. Well, they are so much better than they use to be! They are filled with rich literature and are so colorful! It is a great skill for the kids to work on their comprehension skills, enrichment skills and most importantly, they are working on their independent working skills. They are thrilled with them! They have a correcting buddy, who corrects theirs and hands it back to them for corrections… I have a folder for each student that I will share with you at conference time. Ms Jenison and I are sharing the kits, so we each have them every other week.  I think it is a great addition to our reading materials, and I hope it is another thing we can do to help the students excel on their basic skills tests.

In Math this week, we are working on our new Chapter 6. It involves multiplying 2D by 2D numbers and problem solving. They learned last week how to make organized lists. That was kind of interesting! We will continue working on our math reviews. This week we will also be multiplying money.

For Social Studies, we will be continuing on our exploration of the Southeastern United States region. We will also continue talking about rocks and minerals during Science. If we had our daily oral science and daily oral social studies, we do keep busy each day!!

We are going to the care center today for a Valentine’s party with our friends. That is something we always look forward to!

I thank the room parents for the party they are putting on for us tomorrow!! Thanks for all your time and effort. The kids appreciate it so much!!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (Home)   444-4300 ext. 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo February 6, 2012

Monday Memo

February 6, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend. It did look a little more like winter this weekend, but what a January we had!  It was nice to have a full week of school last week as we were able to accomplish all of our goals for the week. I want to let you know that your child can make their Valentine box this week and bring it to school Monday for Tuesday’s Valentine’s party. I thank the room parents for the planning they are currently doing for our party next week!! We are not allowed to send home the class lists of names, so I won’t be sending that home with the kids this year. I guess it is a privacy law. I can tell you that we have 22 students, if that would help at all. The students can start bringing their Valentines on Monday.

This week in reading, we are reading a story entitled “Sing to the Stars”. It is another of our problem solver stories and it has a problem and how the character goes about solving the problem. We will be working on the following skills:  Vocabulary, Comprehension, Story Structure, Analogies, and in grammar we will be working on using adjectives and elaborating with them. Our spelling words have the VCCV pattern in them and the list is attached to this memo. I am excited to tell you that our school has purchased SRA kits that we will be starting this week. I will be using them on some students more than others, but find that they are an excellent independent activity for students to work on their comprehension skills. I have also challenged the students to read their usual two books for the month, but for those that read and pass at least 4 RC quizzes, I will be giving them their own bag of popcorn as a prize for doing that!! I have a couple students who passed 0 quizzes in January and that hurts their comprehension score for third quarter, so I am hoping this incentive will help them to bring up their grade!

In Math, we tested over our 4^th chapter on Friday. I sent the tests home with the students. This week we are starting on our 6^th chapter which is on multiplication once again. This week our lessons will be with multiplying multiples of ten, estimating products, using arrays to multiply large numbers, and making an organized list. Continue working with the students on their multiplication facts, and this chapter should be very easy for them. We will continue with our daily reviews and timed multiplication tests as well.

We are working on the Southeastern Region of the United States. If you have any artifacts from this region, please feel free to send them with your child to share during our Monday Share Day time. This week we will be talking about the Mississippi River and the warm weather and the cash crops this region produces. Just to write the words warm weather brings a nice thought to my mind…

For Science, we are starting a unit on Rocks and Minerals. Last week I had written that we are going to start on weather, but we are going to continue with the earth theme and work on rocks and minerals. I told the students that if they had some rocks to share and could identify if they were metamorphic, igneous or sedimentary or if they could tell us what kind of rock they were, they could share them also during our share time. I tend to get a lot of polished rocks, and rocks they pick up on the ground on the way to school, if I don’t put limitations on their sharing… We only have so much time…

I hope everyone has a great week! As always, feel free to call me with any questions or concerns!!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (Home)  444-4300 ext. 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo January 30, 2012

Monday Memo

January 30, 2012

Dear Parents,

I am having a hard time believing it is the end of January already!! What a fast month that was!! It also seems like a fast winter, with no snow for such a long time. I am not complaining, that is for sure!! Thanks to everyone for remembering to send the boots and snow pants with your child to school. We got through our story last week, even with the late starts. The kids worked really hard and they got through everything I had planned.

This week we are starting on a new story about a boy in China. We will be learning some things about China as well as designing a dragon. The story is called The Last Dragon. We will be working on the following skills:  Comprehension, Vocabulary, Questioning Techniques, Note Taking and Adjectives in Grammar. Our Spelling this week will be words with j and s  and the list is attached to this memo.

In Math, we are finishing up on our 4^th chapter, with the test on Friday. We will be working on misleading graphs, problem solving, and reviewing the chapter, this week. Please continue having your child work on their multiplication facts. We will be taking daily timed tests over them. Our daily reviews (buckets) are such a great opportunity for the kids to review previously learned concepts and they are a great preparation for the basic skills tests that are coming up!

We are starting new units in both Science and Social Studies this week. We are moving to the SE region of the United States for our new unit. This week we are going to talk about the Mississippi River  and doing a skills over maps at different scales. We are starting to talk about weather this week in Science and we will be discussing the layers of the atmosphere this week. We will talk about the layer that most of our weather occurs and a little about the effects of acid rain on the environment.

Thank-you for encouraging your children to perform random acts of kindness. Today is the last day that we will be sharing what we did to be kind to one another. I hope they continue doing these random acts but we won’t be sharing every Monday over them after today.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call or email me!

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-4300 ext. 336 (School)  444-4300 (Home)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo January 15, 2012

Monday Memo

January 16, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend! Just a few quick reminders:  Friday is the Coaches for Cancer during the basketball games. Each classroom is challenged to raise money for cancer. The winning class will get a pizza party with the wrestling cheerleaders. What a marvelous thing to contribute to! The contributions are due this week. Thanks to all who have contributed to this very worthy fight!!

We are starting a new reading unit. It is entitled “Problem Solvers”. The stories are of how different characters have handled tough situations! This week we are starting on a story entitled “My Name is Maria Isabel”. We will be working on a variety of skills including comprehension and vocabulary, symbolism, sequencing, and predicting outcomes. For grammar this week, we will be working on the forms of the very be. Our spelling words this week are attached to this memo. With our centers and our guided reading groups, we are pretty busy during this time.

For Math, we are enjoying our Chapter 4. We are working on bar graphs, graphing ordered pairs, line graphs and problem solving strategies. We do daily reviews as well as working on our multiplication facts, each day. Keep working on those facts. Most of the kids have committed them to memory, just a few still need to get them there. They will with practice!

For Social Studies this week, we will be talking about what the Mountain States are like today and then we will be comparing those states to the Swiss Alps. For Science, I am hoping to get our review in and send the study guide home with the students on Thursday, with the test on Friday. I am planning that as of today!

The students no longer have Spanish class. Mrs. Kelley was needed at the high school, so I wanted you to be aware of that. Just a reminder of the early out on Wednesday.

Thank-you for your help with the random acts of kindness!! I enjoy the sharing the students do over what they have done!!

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

Phone:  444-3093 (home) 444-4300 ext. 336 (School)

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us