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 4th 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
