Mallen's Monday Memo September 5, 2012

Monday Memo

(Tuesday) September 4, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great, relaxing, long weekend!! We were busy last week! I think the students have finally started settling into the 4^th grade routine and I know this is going to be an awesome year! Your children are incredibly kind to each other and they have adapted to our new building procedures very well!! We had our pictures taken last week as well. They looked so awesome with their nice clothes onJ Just a reminder that the book order is due the 15th.

For reading this week, we are going to be reading a story entitled Grandfather’s Journey. It is a great story and a great piece of realistic fiction for the kids! We will be working on a lot of skills this week . Some of them are: Comprehension, vocabulary, using ly and y correctly in words, using a word web, and journaling. For grammar, we are starting on subjects and predicates this week. They did an outstanding job of understanding the 4 kinds of sentences that we worked on last week. Our spelling words this week have the sounds of short and long I and short and long o. The list is attached to this memo. I have given all of the students a Judy Blume book that is at their lexile level. Some of the books are from the school library and some are from my library. That is the book they are to read 15 minutes a night and then test on. They also have library books that they can read at their leisure as well. I would like the Judy Blume book finished by September 15th. That gives them a goal of two books to read a month. One that I give them that each month is of a different genre (This month we have a fiction book) and then they can test on their library book for the 2^nd book (or more if they get more books read!) Thanks for your help with that! They have an incentive chart they fill out for each quiz passed over their book. Once they fill their incentive chart, they will receive a trip to the treasure box. They will then start a new chart.

Staying with reading, our K-6 is adopting a half hour period of time each day which we call RTI (Response to Intervention) time. It is from 10:30-11:00 for all grade levels. That is our guided reading time. Every other day we also have another teacher (For our class it is Mrs. Trampel) that takes a group for guided reading time. Our guided reading time focuses as it always has on:  Comprehension, Vocabulary and the Reading Strategy of the week. Along with the guided reading lesson, we are focusing on main idea. Every other day the students will be working on a main idea lesson along with the guided reading lesson. Every day they will be having guided reading. This is just another thing we are working on to increase our reading scores. I can’t say this enough, PLEASE continue having them read every night for at least 15 minutes! It is the BEST way to practice the skills we are learning!

Math this week has us working on rounding greater numbers, problem solving, reviewing what we have learned so far in our first chapter and understanding the dollar sign and decimal point. We are going to really get after those multiplication facts this week as well. Having them work at least 10 minutes a night on them, is such a great help! We are also doing our daily reviews that I call our “buckets”. This is something that is a great help to them in reviewing previously learned material. It is great for our ITBS tests as well!

Social Studies has had us doing some awesome things on the prometheon board. We have been working on the skills of using a map, understanding globes, looking at different kinds of maps and this week we are going to work on elevation maps, landform maps, and physical maps. We do some really neat daily oral geography activities to reinforce what we learned the time before. The games are another way we reinforce what we have read about, in a fun way!

In Science, we are finishing up on our first unit of animal classification. Ask your child to name the 5 kingdoms all living creatures are divided into. We have done some cool prometheon board activities over the concept of classification. We did a fun shoe activity as well other ways to classify shoes. Each science day we begin our lesson with a daily oral science lesson. We are currently working on one that explains why flowers have scents and different colors.  These are fun daily tasks to reinforce some important science concepts that are found on the ITBS. We alternate Science/Social Studies every other day.

Our library day is on Green 4 days, which this week is on Friday, if you can remind your child to return their library books that are due. I would also like to add that this year we have 20 minutes a day in the computer lab which has been another great way to reinforce previously learned concepts! If that day we are working on Successmaker, if they achieve 80% or greater on the lesson, they will mark a box on their incentive chart!! Once their line is filled, they will be able to pick a prize out of the treasure box.

As always, any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me! As I stated at conferences, I would prefer to be proactive as opposed to reactiveJ

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

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

Email:  chris.mallen@bkcsd.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo August 27, 2012

Monday Memo

August 21, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a wonderful summer! It definitely went by very quickly! This is the first of this year’s Monday Memos. Each Monday your child will take home a Monday Memo. It will include what we will be studying that week, any tests we may be having, and other things you may want to know. This memo is to inform you as to our year in a nutshell.

This year the students will be very busy. We are so fortunate to have a  wonderful reading series that incorporates spelling and grammar right into each unit. The students will have weekly spelling lists that will be attached to the Monday Memo. Their spelling tests will be on Fridays.  They will have daily grammar lessons as well. Each day the students will be in a guided reading group where they will meet for 20 minutes. During that time, the students will be reading in small groups, from a story that goes with the weekly theme. They will also be working on a skill each week, whether it is on prediction, inference…  Each unit has a writing activity as a component of the program. We will be working on that as well, so each student will have a piece of writing for you to see during our parent/teacher conferences.  The stories they will be reading in their anthology book are wonderful pieces of literature. Each student will also always have an RC book in a bag with them. They are to take these books home each night and bring them back in the morning. I ask that they read for at least 15 minutes each night. Practice is the best way to become a good reader and I would like to see them learn to read as a leisure activity for the rest of their life as well. If they get into the habit of reading daily at a young age, the chance is there that they will continue that habit. They will quiz over their RC books when finished reading. They have three opportunities to get 70% or better. Once they do that, they will receive a punch on their reading card that is hanging on the bulletin board.  I will also have this as one of their comprehension grades.  Our first theme is entitled “Journeys” and the focus is on the mystery genre. Each student is to read two RC books a month. To begin the year, all of the students are reading independently the same story Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. I think that book is a great way to start the new school year! Our reading period is around two hours a day.

Moving on to Math… In 4^th grade we expect the kids to have their multiplication facts memorized. We don’t have a lot of time to spend memorizing the facts as our curriculum moves us right along. Knowing those facts, however, is crucial to so many of the things we will be learning in math. Please help your child practice those facts each night. We will be taking occasional timed multiplication tests to keep track of their progress. It is just so very important for their future math years to have those memorized. Thanks for your help with that!! We have found the first two chapters in math to be probably the ones that are the trickiest. We spend our math time with a review activity, a fact sheet, a lesson, a math practice assignment and then if they get that done, we have a math menu board where they can choose from a variety of math review games to work on. Our math period is typically 60 minutes long.

Fitting in Science and Social Studies in our hectic schedule is always a challenge. We will be doing one or the other each day for about 45 minutes. For Science, we will be working on life science first. We will be learning about the importance of classifying living things. We will then get into such things as animal adaptations… Once we have completed our units in life science we will move to earth science and then we will finish the year with physical science. We try to do some experimenting each week but our primary focus is on learning new vocabulary words. Our science tests really want them to have a good understanding of the terms and concepts in science.  Our social studies begins with a map skills unit. We will be using a lot of hands on maps and our promethean boards to understand our place in the world.  Once we finish our preliminary unit on map skills, we will be learning about the different regions of the United States. If you have traveled to a region which we are studying and have any artifacts, brochures, pictures… you would like to share please feel free to send it with your child.

Speaking of sharing, every Monday is “Share Day”.  During the beginning of the day, we set aside a few minutes for the students to share whatever they would like to share with the class. That is a good time to share their artifacts from the above paragraph. They may bring whatever you are comfortable having them bring to share also. It is also a good opportunity for students to speak in front of the class and to become comfortable doing that as well as it being a good chance to really get to know each other.

My expectations of the students are simply that they respect the other students and that they respect me. I won’t tolerate any disrespect of either. If there is a situation I feel you need to be aware of, I will either email you or phone you. I also expect the students to do their homework and bring it back the next day. I don’t assign homework but if the students don’t get the work finished in the time allotted, that will be their homework. They will bring it home in a folder called their homework folder. If they don’t have their homework finished, they will be in at recess to finish it. There will be times when they will be in recess to relearn something I felt they didn’t grasp earlier in the day. Learning it in a small group setting sometimes makes it easier and hearing it a second time is sometimes all it takes to learn something new. So, if they are in at recess it typically isn’t for bad behavior, it is typically to get a second chance at learning something new. This is something our district will be doing on a daily basis as a way of making sure the students are understanding new concepts.

We enjoy celebrating each other’s birthdays. If you wish to send a treat, you are more than welcome. Please don’t feel you have to, it is just okay if you would like to.

I thank-you for the chance to work with your child this school year! I am huge on communication, so please feel free to give me a call or shoot me an email whenever you have any questions or concerns. I will always have my number and email address on the Monday Memo to refer to.

Here’s to a great school year!!

Chris Mallen

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

Email:  chris.mallen@bkscd.org

Mallen's Monday Memo February 13, 2012

Monday Memo

February 13, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend! We had another busy week last week. Our book Harris and Me was due on Friday. I challenged the students that if they passed 4 RC quizzes during the month of February, I would give them a bag of popcorn. They are required to pass 2 for one of their comprehension grades. I have several who have already read and passed 4 quizzes. I love that motivation. We read a book at school from Andrew Clements entitled No Talking and on Thursday we challenged ourselves to follow the rules of that book. It was quite interesting. You could only say 3 words at a time and use gestures, sign language, nodding and notebook writing, to communicate. I think the kids had a lot of fun with that and realized that sometimes when you take the time to really think about what you want to say, you end up realizing that it really wasn’t that important to say. You actually spend more time listening and I thought that was an interesting lesson.

This week and next, we are at the end of our reading unit and will be working on two stories this week and on poems for next week. Our spelling words are review words this week and our grammar lessons are reviewing over the forms of the verb be and adjectives. We our reading some short stories about real individuals who solved some problems in their life, during our guided reading time. Our centers will also be reviewing previously learned concepts. We have an exciting addition to our classroom. You may remember the old SRA kits that you had as a kid. Well, they are so much better than they use to be! They are filled with rich literature and are so colorful! It is a great skill for the kids to work on their comprehension skills, enrichment skills and most importantly, they are working on their independent working skills. They are thrilled with them! They have a correcting buddy, who corrects theirs and hands it back to them for corrections… I have a folder for each student that I will share with you at conference time. Ms Jenison and I are sharing the kits, so we each have them every other week.  I think it is a great addition to our reading materials, and I hope it is another thing we can do to help the students excel on their basic skills tests.

In Math this week, we are working on our new Chapter 6. It involves multiplying 2D by 2D numbers and problem solving. They learned last week how to make organized lists. That was kind of interesting! We will continue working on our math reviews. This week we will also be multiplying money.

For Social Studies, we will be continuing on our exploration of the Southeastern United States region. We will also continue talking about rocks and minerals during Science. If we had our daily oral science and daily oral social studies, we do keep busy each day!!

We are going to the care center today for a Valentine’s party with our friends. That is something we always look forward to!

I thank the room parents for the party they are putting on for us tomorrow!! Thanks for all your time and effort. The kids appreciate it so much!!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

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

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo February 6, 2012

Monday Memo

February 6, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone had a great weekend. It did look a little more like winter this weekend, but what a January we had!  It was nice to have a full week of school last week as we were able to accomplish all of our goals for the week. I want to let you know that your child can make their Valentine box this week and bring it to school Monday for Tuesday’s Valentine’s party. I thank the room parents for the planning they are currently doing for our party next week!! We are not allowed to send home the class lists of names, so I won’t be sending that home with the kids this year. I guess it is a privacy law. I can tell you that we have 22 students, if that would help at all. The students can start bringing their Valentines on Monday.

This week in reading, we are reading a story entitled “Sing to the Stars”. It is another of our problem solver stories and it has a problem and how the character goes about solving the problem. We will be working on the following skills:  Vocabulary, Comprehension, Story Structure, Analogies, and in grammar we will be working on using adjectives and elaborating with them. Our spelling words have the VCCV pattern in them and the list is attached to this memo. I am excited to tell you that our school has purchased SRA kits that we will be starting this week. I will be using them on some students more than others, but find that they are an excellent independent activity for students to work on their comprehension skills. I have also challenged the students to read their usual two books for the month, but for those that read and pass at least 4 RC quizzes, I will be giving them their own bag of popcorn as a prize for doing that!! I have a couple students who passed 0 quizzes in January and that hurts their comprehension score for third quarter, so I am hoping this incentive will help them to bring up their grade!

In Math, we tested over our 4^th chapter on Friday. I sent the tests home with the students. This week we are starting on our 6^th chapter which is on multiplication once again. This week our lessons will be with multiplying multiples of ten, estimating products, using arrays to multiply large numbers, and making an organized list. Continue working with the students on their multiplication facts, and this chapter should be very easy for them. We will continue with our daily reviews and timed multiplication tests as well.

We are working on the Southeastern Region of the United States. If you have any artifacts from this region, please feel free to send them with your child to share during our Monday Share Day time. This week we will be talking about the Mississippi River and the warm weather and the cash crops this region produces. Just to write the words warm weather brings a nice thought to my mind…

For Science, we are starting a unit on Rocks and Minerals. Last week I had written that we are going to start on weather, but we are going to continue with the earth theme and work on rocks and minerals. I told the students that if they had some rocks to share and could identify if they were metamorphic, igneous or sedimentary or if they could tell us what kind of rock they were, they could share them also during our share time. I tend to get a lot of polished rocks, and rocks they pick up on the ground on the way to school, if I don’t put limitations on their sharing… We only have so much time…

I hope everyone has a great week! As always, feel free to call me with any questions or concerns!!

Sincerely,

Chris Mallen

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

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo January 30, 2012

Monday Memo

January 30, 2012

Dear Parents,

I am having a hard time believing it is the end of January already!! What a fast month that was!! It also seems like a fast winter, with no snow for such a long time. I am not complaining, that is for sure!! Thanks to everyone for remembering to send the boots and snow pants with your child to school. We got through our story last week, even with the late starts. The kids worked really hard and they got through everything I had planned.

This week we are starting on a new story about a boy in China. We will be learning some things about China as well as designing a dragon. The story is called The Last Dragon. We will be working on the following skills:  Comprehension, Vocabulary, Questioning Techniques, Note Taking and Adjectives in Grammar. Our Spelling this week will be words with j and s  and the list is attached to this memo.

In Math, we are finishing up on our 4^th chapter, with the test on Friday. We will be working on misleading graphs, problem solving, and reviewing the chapter, this week. Please continue having your child work on their multiplication facts. We will be taking daily timed tests over them. Our daily reviews (buckets) are such a great opportunity for the kids to review previously learned concepts and they are a great preparation for the basic skills tests that are coming up!

We are starting new units in both Science and Social Studies this week. We are moving to the SE region of the United States for our new unit. This week we are going to talk about the Mississippi River  and doing a skills over maps at different scales. We are starting to talk about weather this week in Science and we will be discussing the layers of the atmosphere this week. We will talk about the layer that most of our weather occurs and a little about the effects of acid rain on the environment.

Thank-you for encouraging your children to perform random acts of kindness. Today is the last day that we will be sharing what we did to be kind to one another. I hope they continue doing these random acts but we won’t be sharing every Monday over them after today.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to call or email me!

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

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

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo January 15, 2012

Monday Memo

January 16, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend! Just a few quick reminders:  Friday is the Coaches for Cancer during the basketball games. Each classroom is challenged to raise money for cancer. The winning class will get a pizza party with the wrestling cheerleaders. What a marvelous thing to contribute to! The contributions are due this week. Thanks to all who have contributed to this very worthy fight!!

We are starting a new reading unit. It is entitled “Problem Solvers”. The stories are of how different characters have handled tough situations! This week we are starting on a story entitled “My Name is Maria Isabel”. We will be working on a variety of skills including comprehension and vocabulary, symbolism, sequencing, and predicting outcomes. For grammar this week, we will be working on the forms of the very be. Our spelling words this week are attached to this memo. With our centers and our guided reading groups, we are pretty busy during this time.

For Math, we are enjoying our Chapter 4. We are working on bar graphs, graphing ordered pairs, line graphs and problem solving strategies. We do daily reviews as well as working on our multiplication facts, each day. Keep working on those facts. Most of the kids have committed them to memory, just a few still need to get them there. They will with practice!

For Social Studies this week, we will be talking about what the Mountain States are like today and then we will be comparing those states to the Swiss Alps. For Science, I am hoping to get our review in and send the study guide home with the students on Thursday, with the test on Friday. I am planning that as of today!

The students no longer have Spanish class. Mrs. Kelley was needed at the high school, so I wanted you to be aware of that. Just a reminder of the early out on Wednesday.

Thank-you for your help with the random acts of kindness!! I enjoy the sharing the students do over what they have done!!

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

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

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us

Mallen's Monday Memo January 9, 2012

Monday Memo

January 12, 2012

Dear Parents,

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend. I think everyone is getting back into the routine of school again.

I thank-you for occasionally asking the kids about any random acts of kindness they may be doing. We are going to start sharing these on Monday.

For reading this week, we are finishing up on our “That’s Amazing” unit. This week we will be reading two stories, an excerpt from The Borrowers and an article from Boy’s Life Magazine entitled Lord of the Fleas. This week will be about reviewing our grammar and reading skills from the unit. Those include wrapping up the theme, reading for details, vocabulary over the new stories, comparing/contrasting the flea performers in the story, and a total review of action verbs, main and helping verbs, identifying tense, singular and plural nouns, and possessives, in grammar. Our spelling words are a review over some tricky words from the unit and are attached to this memo.

For Math, we are starting our fourth chapter. We tested over our Chapter 5 on Thursday, and I sent home the results to you. We are still doing period multiplication timed tests and for the most part they are doing really well, but a few still need to keep practicing them. We will talk about units of time and elapsed time, problem solving with time, calendars and pictographs this week, along with our daily reviews.

We are continuing to finish up on our mountain region of the United States. We will be talking about the women’s right to vote, and working on some social studies skills including drawing conclusions, and reference sources.

For Science, we are working on earthquakes and volcanoes this week. We will be doing some promethon board activities over these concepts as well as reading some books over these natural disasters.

I sent home book orders last Wednesday. They are due on January 16^th.

As always, with any questions or concerns, please give me a call or an email!!

Have a great week!

Chris Mallen

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

Email:  chris.mallen@belmond-klemme.k12.ia.us