Mallen's Monday Memo May 20, 2013

Monday Memo

May 20, 2013

 

Dear Parents,

 

We are rapidly approaching the end of the year. This will be my last Monday Memo, so I will try to put as many calendar items as I can think of, for the rest of the year, on here.

 

Last week was quite the busy week!

 We ate at the care center on Tuesday. They graciously made us chicken nuggets and macaroni and cheese and we had ice cream treats as well. They were so good to us this year and it was a fantastic experience for all of us!!

We went fishing on Wednesday.

We were treated to Mrs. Bates coming and talking about the Summer reading program. It sounds like a fantastic program with fun field trips and guests… I encourage everyone to sign up for the fun!! Did the students tell you she ate worms?? You will have to ask them about that.

We had Antarctica Man (Kelly Wilhelm) come in person and talk to us about his experiences there and answer a multitude of questions.

 

The next few weeks are filled with some fun as well:

May 21:  Music Man Square Field Trip (Sack lunches provided.)

May 23 (May 24 rain date):  Track Meet (9-11:00 for us)

May 27 (No school: Memorial Day)

June 4:  I will be using the leftover money from the parties and my own, to buy the kids pizza for lunch. They are to bring their own beverage.

 

We finished on Friday with our reading series. The next two weeks we are going to be working on a variety of skills and next week we are going to make some book commercials. I will be videotaping them. If your child asks for a prop of some sort, that is what it is for.

 

For Math, we will be testing today over chapter 8. We will start on chapter 9 tomorrow. Chapter 9 is over fractions. We are also finished with Science for the year. We will be working on the Midwest Region of the United States for Social Studies. We will test over it and we will also be making a travel brochure over one of the Midwest States. 

 

Thank-you so much for sharing your children with me. It has been an honor. They are truly great kids, who will do very well in their future!! They are very kind and compassionate! I wish them the very best in their journey to 5^th grade!!

 

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

 

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

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo April 28, 2013

Monday Memo

April 29, 2013

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Finally, some nice weather to talk about!! We had a very busy week last week! We spent last week celebrating Earth Week. On Monday we made sock puppets with Mrs. Wagner’s class. We cleaned out our lockers and desks, we picked up garbage at City Park on Thursday, we made a class poster that will be out in the community in a week or so, and we listened to a story about garbage recycling. It was a great way to acknowledge Earth Week and our role in keeping our planet clean! Our most exciting and time consuming project we did last week were our ads for the Belmond Independent. We divided up into teams and the kids designed ads for the business they were given. They did such a great job and spent a lot of time and effort designing these. Mr. Vanderlinden will be bringing copies of the Belmond Independent for each of the 4^th graders, so they can show them to you. I think you will be impressed with what they have come up with!

 

This week we are reading a story for our Nature:  Friend or Foe unit entitled “Wildfires”. This is a good non-fiction story about how wildfires spread and what happens because of them. The students will be working on a variety of skills this week including:  Comprehension, vocabulary, main idea, supporting details, and the use of good and well and they will work on analogies. During grammar they will be working on elaborating with adverbs. The spelling words will all be words that are “usual” spellings. The list is attached to this memo.

 

We will be getting back to Science this week. Last week I talked about starting on weather. Well, due to ads, and Earth activities, it didn’t happen. So, this week we will be working on Earth’s atmosphere, air masses and ways of predicting weather.

 

We are working on congruent figures and motions, symmetry, and other geometric terms this week during our geometry unit. We will be doing some “playing” with manipulatives and talking about different figures and how they are different and the same from each other.

 

Friday is our “Go the Distance Day”. It is a fun way for our entire school to be physically active. We are very excited to have Kelly Wilhelm skype us today from Antarctica. We are so lucky as he shows us a lot of different things he sees down there and answers our abundant questions. It is a great opportunity for the kids to “see” a continent they will most likely never have the chance to go to. He is coming to actually talk to us in person on May 17^th and we look forward to that day as well!!

 

As usual, any questions or concerns, please give me a call/email!

 

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

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

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo April 15, 2013

Monday Memo

April 15, 2013

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend!! The students worked very hard on their Iowa Assessments last week! I want to take this time to thank Mrs. Simonson for the treats she provided for the students each day last week!! That was incredibly thoughtful, and it gave the students something to look forward to when finishing their tests each day!! It was also a tough week of having to stay indoors for recess each day due to the weather conditions. They also missed their specials a few days due to the morning tests, so being cooped up was kind of the norm for them and they handled it very well!! Hopefully spring will actually make an appearance at some point!

 

This week, we are ending our Heroes unit. We will be learning about porquois tales. They will be reading and writing some as well. Their spelling words are attached to this memo. Their grammar lessons this week will be about correctly combining sentences. They will also be working on syllable pairs, animal descriptors and exact verbs. It is kind of a review of what they have learned in their heroes unit.

 

We will be finishing up on our division unit in math this week. Our chapter test will be on Thursday. The students have done a nice job learning how to divide numbers and have learned about the divisibility rules and how to do averages. Our next chapter focuses us on geometry!

 

Our Northeastern Region of the United States unit, will come to an end this week also. A study guide will come home with the students on Tuesday night, with the test on Wednesday.  We will be starting a unit on weather during our science time!!

 

We are testing over Hatchet today. I think most of the students really enjoyed this action packed book. I read a chapter a day and they read a chapter. We will be doing the same with their next book, Misty of Chincoteague. I will read a chapter and assign a chapter for them to read at night. We will have this book done by the end of April, to be tested on.

 

Just a reminder that there is an early out on Wednesday. On Thursday, Dirk Vanderlinden is coming to talk to the 4^th graders about a special project we will be doing with them. The students will be assigned a business and will be creating and ad for them, to be published in the paper. This is a project that has been done with the Independent for around 15 years. We are happy to be a part of this!!

 

As always, if you have any questions/concerns, please give me a call or email me!!

 

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

 

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

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo, May 13, 2013

Monday Memo

May 13, 2013

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a nice weekend! Last week was a busy one for us and this week will continue that trend. It must be May!  Last week the students spent a lot of time having extra music practices before their concert on Tuesday night. Wednesday we began our third session of MAP testing. We tested on Wednesday and Friday. With the late start and no school on the 2^nd, and all of the above, we are really struggling to get everything in. Consequently, we are off schedule with our reading. We will post test the spelling words they got on Wednesday of last week, on Friday. That will be our reading assessment day as well. This week is a busy week for us as well. Tomorrow the fourth grade students have been invited to eat lunch at the care center. This is an annual lunch the care center has put on for us. We are so very fortunate to have them do this for us!! So, we will be eating lunch there at 11:15. We look forward to that! On Wednesday, the students will be going fishing for PE. At 1:00 on Wednesday, Mrs. Bates from the library will be coming to talk to us about their summer reading program. On Friday, Mr. Antarctica Man (Kelly Wilhelm) will be coming to our class in person and talking to us more about this continent and answer questions the kids may have. Quite a week!

 

In between all of the above, we will be finishing our unit on Nature:  Friend or Foe. The story we are working on now is entitled Skylark and it is the second book in the Sarah, Plain and Tall series. I have read the series to the kids and I think they enjoyed those books. We will be working on the skills of: Vocabulary, Comprehension, making  inferences, roots graph and tract, and prepositional phrases. Our spelling words are words with a silent letter in them. The spelling list was handed out to the students last Wednesday.

 

We are finishing up on our geometry unit in Math. We should be testing by the end of the week. I will be sending a study guide home with the students tonight, for a science test on weather, tomorrow. We will be starting a unit on the Midwest Region for social studies after that.

 

I hope everyone has a great week! As always, please feel free to call me with questions/concerns.

 

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

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

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org