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 4th 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 2nd 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
