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 1st. I gave your child a new story to read by November 15th, 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 15th, I will send them to the library to read another book. I will be giving them a book on the 15th.

 

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

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