Monday Memo

April 28, 2014

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend! Last week was filled with so many different things. We were treated to a visit from Kelley Wilhelm (AKA Antarctica Man). He has spoken to the 4^th grade for the last 4 years about his work on the continent of Antarctica. In the past he has Skyped us from there. He was here in person and did a fantastic presentation about the continent and what he does there. He will be receiving his PHD from the University of Wisconsin in August. One of the components of his Antarctica project was student outreach and our 4^th grade at Jacobson Elementary was chosen to be his outreach class. Ask your child what they learned about Antarctica! We also celebrated Earth Week by reading stories, cleaning our lockers out, and we will be picking up trash in the community, once the weather cooperates!

 

We finished our Heroes unit. We really enjoyed the stories and activities over a variety of different heroes. The students all wrote a hero story. I thought they did a great job on them and I look forward to you reading them when they take them home! This week our new unit is entitled:  Nature Friend and Foe. We will be reading stories about nature. Our new story is entitled “Salmon Summer”. We will be working on the following skills this week:  Vocabulary, Comprehension, Direction Following and we will be working on some outlining skills. Our grammar skills this week will be over adverbs. Our spelling words are attached to the memo.

 

For math, we started on our ninth chapter about decimals and fractions. We also started a new unit in Social Studies over the Southeastern region of the United States. We will be talking about the Mississippi River this week, comparing map scales, talking about the warm weather and crops in the region and we will talk about the coal mining done in the region.

 

Today, the students will be bringing home a note letting you know about our upcoming summer school. It will be held June 16-27^th and July 7-18^th. It is a four week session for reading. The students will be here from 9:00 until 12:00 with lunch provided. We will be having a bus stop in Klemme, Goodell, and Rowan at a site to be revealed in the forthcoming letter. Once you have received the letter, please email me if you are interested in your child participating. Once we have all of the names of students willing to commit to the program, a letter will be sent home with those that will be elgible to participate. My email is at the bottom of this memo. I will put this paragraph in the next few Monday memos to remind you to let me know if you are interested in your child participating.

 

 

As always, call with any questions/concerns!!

Have a great week!

 

Chris Mallen

Home: 444-3093    School:  444-4300 ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.org

 

 

Mallen's Monday Memo April 21. 2014

Monday Memo

April 21, 2014

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great Easter weekend! Unfortunately we were unable to go to the care center last week, but they were so kind to us and brought over treats in Easter eggs and marshmallow treats!! So wonderful of them and a nice way to kick off our long weekend!!

 

We will be reviewing previously learned skills over our Heroes unit. We will be reading a story this week that comes from the series of books about the horses of Chincoteague. The students all received one of Margurite Henry’s books on the horses, as their second book to read for the month of April. Those books are due on the last day of April. I will be giving them their first book of May, on the first of May.  This week we will be writing a story about our hero. We will go through all of the steps of publishing. We will also be talking about cause and effect. Our review spelling words will be going home with the students tomorrow. Today we took our post test from last week since we weren’t at school last Friday.

 

For math, we will be spending the week reviewing over Chapter 8. On Friday, we will be taking the test over our geometry unit.

 

We have just started a very short unit on Fossils in Science. I will be sending a study guide home with the students on Thursday. We will be testing over this short unit on Friday.

 

Sometime in the near future, the students will be bringing home a note letting you know about our upcoming summer school. It will be held June 16-27^th and July 7-18^th. It is a four week session for reading. The students will be here from 9:00 until 12:00 with lunch provided. We will be having a bus stop in Klemme, Goodell, and Rowan at a site to be revealed in the forthcoming letter. Once you have received the letter, please email me if you are interested in your child participating. Once we have all of the names of students willing to commit to the program, a letter will be sent home with those that will be elgible to participate. My email is at the bottom of this memo. I will put this paragraph in the next few Monday memos to remind you to let me know if you are interested in your child participating.

 

 

As always, call with any questions/concerns!!

Have a great week!

 

Chris Mallen

Home: 444-3093    School:  444-4300 ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.k12.ia.us

 

 

Monday Memo

April 7, 2014

 

Dear Parents,

 

I hope everyone had a great weekend! I thank-you all for the beautiful flowers and the thoughtful cards and letters…  I came back to work a week early. The kids have been just great at helping me when I need some help!  I appreciate all Mrs. Lovgren did with the class during my absence!!

 

Today we began the Iowa Assessments. We did the language component today. Tomorrow we will do the reading component. On Wednesday we will be doing the math component and we will finish on Thursday with the Science component of the test.

 

I also wanted to let you know that you can get on our typing page now at home and the students can practice their typing skills. They have their own password and username. (They have them memorized.) This is only if you want them to do it. It isn’t a requirement. It is just another thing they can do to pass the time that will help them with their keyboarding skills. The web site is:  www. typingweb.com/tutor/

 

We began a new unit in reading entitled “Heroes”.  This is a great unit that gives the students some traits about what a hero looks like. Last week we talked about Dr. King and this week our story is about Gloria Estavan. The story revolves around how she survived a vehicular accident and how she is now making a difference in the life of others. The skills we will be working on this week include:  Vocabulary, Comprehension, character judgements, and homophones. Our grammar skills this week are on object pronouns. The spelling list is attached to this memo. Last week the student s learned about cause and effect. They learned about subject pronouns during grammar.

 

For math, we started a geography unit last week. This week we will be talking about using geometric words to describe, we will learn about the term perimeter, area, and we will be doing some problem solving skills. We finished all of the 4^th grade drops in a bucket review series. We are going to start doing the 5^th grade drops in a bucket now. What is nice about that is that it starts by reviewing the 4^th grade material. It is such a great program to keep math concepts always in their brain.

 

Due to the Iowa Assessments, we won’t be starting our science unit on Fossils, until Friday.

 

As always, call with any questions/concerns!!

Have a great week!

 

Chris Mallen

Home: 444-3093    School:  444-4300 ext. 336

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.k12.ia.us