We hope that everyone will sign up for Seesaw! Many of you are already enjoying seeing pictures and videos of your children at school!
We are still shocked that we are starting our last week before Thanksgiving Break! We have a busy week ahead with our Explorer Feast coming up! Don't forget to sign up to fix a breakfast dish or to come in and help us set up, serve or clean up!!
When we return from Thanksgiving Break, we will be taking the Reading and Math Inventories again to measure gains. We will update you on the scores as soon as we take the assessments.
We have been getting some emails asking for strategies to help improve grades. We hope that you are encouraging your student to use the Moby Max site that Kemp purchased for student practice. Login information is in the front of your child's agenda. This site provides practice for ALL subject areas! Making sure your student is reading EVERY night and practicing their multiplication facts will help more than you realize.
Read Below for Important Upcoming Dates!
Monday 11/14: Mellow Mushroom in Hiram Kemp Spirit Night! Sparkles permission slips go home
Thursday 11/17: Progress Reports go Home; Explorer's Test
Friday 11/18: Explorer Feast and Explorer Projects Due;Sparkles permission slips due!
Reading
Fourth grade standards require students to describe a character in a story using character traits and evidence from the text. Character traits are characteristics that describe a character's personality based on repeated behaviors throughout the story. The students have already placed lots of information in their reading journals and we will be focusing closely on this standard next week. A common mistake that 4th graders make is confusing a character's feelings about an event with traits that describe their personality. For example, "Sad" would describe a character's feelings about a particular situation, but "curious" would describe a trait that character shows repeatedly over a long period of time.
We will also be practicing the skill of using transition words to sequence events in a story. This is a pretty easy standard for most fourth graders. I am attaching a site with some cute videos and games for the kids to practice sequencing.
Character Traits LearnzillionScience:
Math
As we continue to practice factors, multiples, prime & composite....we will begin to use the distributive Property to solve 2 digit x 2 digit multiplication problems. We will use a "box" to organize the partial products the same way we did for 1 x 4 digit problems. We are attaching an anchor chart and videos for you and your child to use at home.
Writing & Grammar
The students are finishing up an informational writing piece about life in Ireland. We read two separate passages and wrote to a prompt that required us to use evidence from both texts. We will be looking for written responses that directly answer the question, use appropriate topic and conclusion sentences and writing that is organized by transitional linking words and phrases. As always, students have a rubric/checklist to follow to self-monitor their writing.
We are working on Relative Pronouns!
We will be moving on to Forces and Motion and Simple machines when we leave our Explorer Unit. We are attaching some videos for you to preview with your child.
