Monday Memo

 September 16, 2013

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Last week we were treated to decorating cookies with our new friends at the Belmond Care Center. We really enjoyed our time there. They are our adopted business and invited the 4^th grade to come over and help them celebrate National Care Center week. We thank them so much for all they do for us! They will be a part of your child’s 4^th grade experience this year!

 

In reading this week, we are testing over Finding the Titanic. We took the spelling test today and we wrapped up our compound sentence unit in grammar. We will be working on a story entitled On the Frontier. This is a story that comes from a chapter in one of the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. With that, today the students will be receiving a Laura Ingalls Wilder book. This is their RC book that I would like to have read and tested on by October 1.  Most of them did a great job testing on at least one RC book. Those that haven’t, will be reading during recess time so that they can get that book finished so they can start on this Laura Ingalls Wilder book. These books are a little bit lengthier, so I recommend that you see how many chapters are in their book and divide that by the number of days until October 1 and have them read that many chapters each night. Again, reading at least two books a month is our focus! Our skills this week in reading include: Comprehension, Vocabulary, Noting details, Taking notes and using guide words. Our spelling words this week are homophones. We will be working on common nouns with our grammar lessons this week as well.  Our guided reading books are all books that have a frontier theme to them. They all work on the skill of noting details in their reading. We also have the individualized SRA kits that we share with the other fourth grade classes. It is our week this week. We aim to get at least two done throughout the week.

 

Today in Math, we spent the time today continuing to work on counting back change. This week we are focusing on decimals, problem solving with problems that have decimals, and doing a diagnostic review. We will continue working on our daily reviews (we call them buckets) and on a daily multiplication sheet with weekly timed multiplication tests.

 

For Science today, we are doing a Science review today. Tomorrow I will be sending home a study guide with the students for Wednesday’s first Science test. This test is over our plant and animal adapatation chapter. We will be starting on a region of the United States to finish our week.

 

I will be sending the book order in today. Once we receive the books, I will send out a new book order. If you are interested in being a homeroom parent to help with the parties, I would love that!! Please let me know via email or phone call. I will put you on the list. Request the party you would like to help with and I will put you on that party and once I receive everything back (let me know by Sept. 30) I will send home a list of phone numbers and names of the people on the committee and you can contact each other to plan. I thank you so much for time and trouble!!

 

 

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