Mallen's Monday Memo (Tuesday, November 19, 2013)

Monday Memo

 Tuesday, November 18, 2013

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend! On Thursday, we are invited to play Thanksgiving Jingo at the care center!! We will be going over there around 2:00 and returning about 2:45. We really appreciate all they do for us at the care center and the prizes they give the kids are so generous!! This memo will be the last one until after Thanksgiving. I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday!! I am very grateful for the wonderful class I have this year and the fantastic support I get from the parents!! I am a very lucky teacher!!

 

In reading this week, we will still be reviewing our “American Stories” unit. This week we will be working on the genre of plays. We will be reading small plays during our RTI time and we will be working on a class play from a Judy Blume book that we read earlier this year. We will be working on a lot of play related vocabulary and some comprehension skills using a play. Dialogue will also be discussed this week. When we return from our holiday break, we will begin a new unit entitled “That’s Amazing” which has a lot of stories of the mystery genre.  Our grammar lessons again are reviewing the different types of nouns. Our spelling words are attached to this memo.

 

In Math we will be spending up until the break on finishing up on our Chapter 4. We will be working on misleading graphs, using data from surveys, problem solving, and then we will be doing a lot of review over the chapter, with the final test being on November 26^th.

 

 

We will be starting a new unit in Science this week. It is over Plant Growth and Adaptations. We will be working on the functions of plants parts, plant life cycles ,and discussing some “super veggies”. We will be sending home a study guide on November 25^th, with the test on November 26^th.

 

On my next memo, I will be talking about some things we will be doing in December that will involve a little help from you. More to come on that…

 

 I appreciate that you sign the planners verifying that they read at least 15 minutes a night! That is one of the best things we can do for the kids!

 

We said good-bye to Rachelle Cole. She and her family are moving to Onslow, Iowa. We will be writing letters back and forth to her, here at school. I am sure she would appreciate any mail and so I am including her new address:

 

Rashelle Cole

c/o Luke and Leslie Cole

13802 60^th Ave.

Onslow, Iowa  52321

 

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

 

Happy Thanksgiving,

Chris Mallen

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

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo November 11, 2013

Monday Memo

 November 11, 2013

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend. Happy Veteran’s Day to all! How grateful we are to the veterans for providing us with a safe place to live! If you are a veteran, I thank you!! This week is another busy one for us! Last week we finished our MAP testing. The students performed really well. It is a tough test and takes time and I appreciate how hard they worked on them!!

 

In reading this week, we will be reviewing our “American Stories” unit. We will be reading two stories this week. One is on Amelia Earhart and the other is on Duke Ellington. We will be talking this week about biographies. We will also be working on vocabulary and comprehension and completing a graphic organizer. Our grammar work this week is reviewing plural, singular and possessive nouns. Our spelling list will be a review this week as well. We will also have the SRA kits this week and will be spending time working on those. Most of the students have passed the quiz already on The Jacket. I thank you for making sure they get that read. For those that haven’t quizzed over it, it is due November 15^th. Once they pass that, they can get a library book to read. I will be giving them a different book on the 15^th of November.

 

In Math this week we will be working on Chapter 4 in math we will be making bar graphs, graphing ordered pairs, making line graphs, and working on mean, median and range. We are also doing a variety of daily reviews, along with our Drops in a Bucket.  We also are continuing to work on doing a multiplication sheet each day.

 

We will be finishing on the NE region of the United States this week. We will be completing some graphic organizers over the lessons we did last week. We will be reviewing the vocabulary we learned in this chapter and on Thursday I will be sending home a study guide for the Chapter 6 test that we will be doing on Friday. Thank-you for going through the study guide with  them!

 

 I appreciate that you sign the planners verifying that they read at least 15 minutes a night! That is one of the best things we can do for the kids!

 

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

Mallen's Monday Memo, November 4, 2013

Monday Memo

 November 4, 2013

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend. This week is another busy one for us! We went to the Belmond Rehabilitation Center and Belle Haven at 1:40 on Thursday, and paraded our costumes for them. We came back to school and participated in the parade at school and then we had our Fall Party .Thank-you so much to our room mothers for putting on that party for us!! I would also like to remind you that your child needs to have read Bound for Oregon by Friday, November 1^st. I gave your child a new story to read by November 15^th, entitled The Jacket. This is a shorter story written by Andrew Clements. I had read the story he had written entitled No Talking and I know they will enjoy this book as much as that one. If they pass the RC quiz over this story before the 15^th, I will send them to the library to read another book. I will be giving them a book on the 15^th.

 

In reading this week, we will be starting a story entitled A Very Important Day. This is a good story about what becoming an American Citizen meant to them. We will be working on the skills of comprehension, vocabulary, and reading from a non fiction text. Our grammar skills for this story will be over possessive singular and plural nouns. Our spelling words this week are attached to this memo. We will be spending some time this week working on the individualized SRA stories. They are a wonderful way to individualize their learning, and they hold them accountable for their reading through a variety of activities they do over the story. We get the kits about a week and a half each month. They are a great way to prepare for our Iowa Assessments in the spring.  We will be completing the MAP tests this week in fourth grade. The students will be taking a test in math, language arts, and reading. Each test takes about an hour to complete and we will be doing one test per day. If they miss the tests due to being gone, they will make them up over their recess time as we have to have everyone tested by next week. This is a test that they complete three times a year.

 

In Math this week we will be working on Chapter 4 in math. We spent a couple of days working on elapsed time last week. Ask them about the number line elapsed time strategy that they learned to use. It has really helped them with their understanding of elapsed time. This week we will be doing some writing in our math, working on calendar skills, pictographs and line plots. We will continue with our daily review and working on our multiplication facts. Almost everyone has become a member of the “Never Again” club. Hopefully soon we will have our entire class become a member of the club. Most of the ones who are left, are very close. Thank-you for going through those facts with them for about 5 minutes a night. It is paying off!!

 

We will continue to be working on the NE region of the United States. This week we will be talking about the Industrial Revolution. We will compare the cities in the NE region to the city of Mumbai. We will work on distributions maps this week. By the end of the week, we will be talking about how the NE region of the United States looks today. Your child receives a  DOG each Monday, unless we don’t have school on Monday, in which case, they receive them on Tuesday.  DOG stands for Daily Oral Geography. I give them to the students on Monday, unless they don’t have school that day, then it is the next day they have school. They are due on Fridays. They are a series of geographical questions to help the students understand where they are in the world. They may use any resource they have, their social studies book, internet, maps, you… If they turn them in by Friday, have their name on them, and get them perfect, they will be in a drawing for a prizeThank-you for your help with these!!

 

 I appreciate that you sign the planners verifying that they read at least 15 minutes a night! That is one of the best things we can do for the kids!

 

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