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