Phone: 444-3093
(Home) 444-4300 ext. 336 (School)
August 25, 2014
Monday Memo
Dear Parents,
We are off to another exciting, adventure filled school
year!! It is hard to believe how fast summer went! With these hot temperatures,
it still feels like we are in the middle of summer!
I have really enjoyed getting to know your child! The
students have been very respectful and I appreciate how hard they have all
worked so far. Fourth grade is a transitional year where a major focus is
teaching them to be accountable for their work. We have an expectation that
when they do not complete an assignment in class, they will complete it at home
and bring it back the next day. That is a skill that they will need throughout
their school years. Unfortunately our planners have not come in yet. They are
to be delivered mid September. I
appreciate that you have signed our “substitute” planners in the meantime.
Hopefully, this will help prepare the kids towards filling out their planners.
Reading has us working on a unit entitled “Journeys”.
Each story is about a journey an animal or human has made and the effects of
that journey. Our first “journey” takes place in Alaska and is about the
Iditarod race that is run annually there. We began this story last week and
will test over it this Friday. We have worked on the different kinds of
sentences for our grammar lessons this week. Our spelling list is filled with
words that have the long vowel sounds spelled with two vowels in the words. I
will typically attach a list to their pretest for you to have to help them prepare.
At times that will be attached to this Monday Memo, but they received the words
last week and now have them. For reading, we are going over the skills of
comprehension, vocabulary, and cause and effect, to name a few.
We are discussing classification in Science. We did a
classification activity with shoes (ask them about it) and have discussed the 5
kingdoms that all living things are grouped into. We took those 5 kingdoms and
broke down each of them. We focused on the animal kingdom and how it is divided
into two groups: vertebrates and invertebrates.
Then this week we will be taking those two groups and dividing them up into
different groups. Next week, the students will be taking a study guide home,
for the test they will be having on the following day. The study guide is to
help the students learn how to prepare for a test. I will give you exact days
on Monday’s Monday Memo.
Math. We have started on our New York Engaged Math. There
are no math books that go with this program. To some up our math, I think of it
as how when we group up we learned many processes and how to do a problem. The
thinking in this curriculum is teaching them why we do the processes we do. The
program contains the math common core required by the federal government. Our
materials for the program haven’t arrived yet, and my promethean board is
having issues with the pen, so I haven’t been able to utilize the flip charts
we created for the program. I am sure the materials will come in quickly and
the board will get fixed. In the meantime we have just made do and gotten by. I
love how the students are working hard and seem to be interested. It will be
fun once they start getting the hang of it. There won’t be a lot of homework
with math. Much of math will be done in class, especially until they start
getting use to this new program. (And I do tooJ)
I am sending home a book order today with the students.
Book orders will always be due on the 15th of each month, or if that
is on a weekend, it will be that following Monday. Thank-you for reading the “book”
about classroom procedures etc. that I sent home with the kids that first day!
Not having preschool conferences was a bit of a challenge getting information
to you. Thank-you for sending back the information forms as that enabled me to
be able to get the email addresses for those of you who sent one back. It also
helps me know what to do with your child in the event of an early dismissal… If
you haven’t returned that form yet, I appreciate it if you could as soon as
possible.
We had a behavioral academy last Thursday that took each
student to a different station: Bus, Playground, Lunchroom, Hallway, Bathroom
and our PBIS leaders talked to the students about the expectations of each of
these environments. The students are able to earn tokens for good behavior and
put that in our token jar. I also have the DoJos up in the classroom. We are
starting today on earning DOJO points. In the near future, I will be sending a
note home with the process of how to connect to our class DOJOs to see how they
are doing. We are just trying to stress our Bronco Pride Expectations of : Be Safe, Care for Others, Do What’s Right, Do
Your Best. We established our classroom expectations and this is what we came
up with:
Be Safe:
We will walk in the halls.
We will keep our hands to ourself.
We will keep single file in the hallway.
Care for Others:
We will treat each
other the way we want to be treated.
We will use inside voices inside the building.
Do What’s Right:
We will respect others personal space.
Do Your Best:
We will have our homework done each day we have any.
We will read 15 minutes each night.
We will work on our multiplication facts at least 5
minutes each night.
If you have any questions or concerns, please, please
feel free to call me. I would rather solve any issues before they become huge
issues.
Have a great week!
Sincerely,
Chris Mallen
Email:
chris.mallen
