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Nicholson
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- Destiny Media Center Catalog
- Cobb Virtual Library
Passwords can be obtained from the Media Center. - Nicholson Home Page
- CCSD Legal Disclaimer
- Cobb County School District
April 2009
April 27, 2009
April 26, 2009
Springing Into the Last of Our Year!!
Testing is just about over and the children seemed focused and dedicated to doing their best. Let me thank you all for your support in getting the children to school each day and on time. Hopefully, the results will arrive before the summer vacation begins. If you have not sent in your 3 stamps, please do so at your earliest convenience. Almost all of our registration forms have been received.
READING
Although the covers of her books appear as if they are written for younger readers, the children have come to realize that Gail Gibbons provides a great deal of information about each topic. With her books, Sunken Treasure and The Honeymakers, we will review the strategies of cause and effect, summarizing, and questioning. The children will then be working independently to read six more of her nonfiction titles. Look for their summaries and what they learned about this author in their Reader's Notebook. With your Boosterthon money, I have purchased a "Flip Video Camera" and am currently filming the children's biography book reports. They look like little movie stars! Will try to get these on the blog within the next week or so.
WRITER'S WORKSHOP
For this last nine weeks, the children are required to write a persuasive essay that will engage the reader, make a "thesis" statement about what they believe, and provide relevant evidence to support their three reasons. We will "share a pen" and write an class essay about being the oldest or youngest in our family. Feel free to add your opinions, mom and dad.
ENGLISH AND SPELLING
Just about done with our Parts of Speech mobiles! Just for fun, will do a quick mini-unit on Prepositions. The children should enjoy making their Preposition House as an art/english project. With our Spelling Word Wizards just about filled, we will be adding more homophones and words with the /yoo/ and /u/ sound with their various spelling patterns. Continue to review those all important 4th grade Core Words as we will take our final asssessement test of those words in the next few weeks.
MATH
With our CRCT testing over, the next big summative assessment is the IMI. Cubes, rectangular and hexagonal prisms, cones and spheres! These are just but a few of the space figures the children will be making and analyzing. Can you tell me how many faces, edges, and vertices there are in a octagonal prism? We will also be continuing to work with graphs and coordinates. LAST CHANCE! Will try to test those students who have not yet made it to the 100 and 100+ Club this Friday(5/1/09) Come on, YOU CAN DO IT!!!!!
Happy Birthday
April 22 Tiego B. May 15 Andrea M.
May 8 Jesus A. May 31 Nic W.
We would like to recognize those students who have a summer birthday
August 6 Baily M. July 5 Chandler B.
July 31 Stephanie C. June 12 Rachel R.
June 13 Andrew S.
COOL CAT AWARDS FOR OUR CLASSROOM
TERRIFIC KID AWARD: (April) RACHEL R. (May) MIRELLA M.
Weather Persons Mackenzie E. Tyler K. Andrew S.
WRITING FAIR WINNER FOR THE 4TH GRADE
JESSICA B.
MAY 1 LAST DAY FOR 100 AND 100+ CLUB MEMBERS
MAY 5 FIRST GRADE PERFORMANCE (7:00)
MAY 6 STARGAZING FOR OUR NEW KINDERGARTEN STUDENTS
MAY 14 FIELD DAY (RAINDATE MAY 15)
MAY 19 FOURTH GRADE AWARD CEREMONY (8:15 A.M.)
MAY 22 LAST DAY OF SCHOOL
March 24, 2009
Looking Forward to Spring Break?
Dear Parents,
In just more than a week, we will be enjoying a well-deserved rest. Thank you so much for continued support of the school and its commitment to a rigorous and all-around balanced education. As you have noticed, many of the notifications of upcoming events are being posted on our school's website. Please check periodically to be certain that you are not missing some of the family learning events that are being held in March and in April.
READING
Nonfiction continues with the focus on an outstanding author, Gail Gibbons. With 100 different books on such topics as Deserts, Sunken Treasure, Dragons, and Rain Forests, the children will find something for every interest. We will use her books to learn more about her as an author and a person, but also to practice the strategies of cause and effect, summarizing, and "sketching-to-stretch," which is visualizing. Our Reader's Notebooks will become a practical resource as we continue to fill them with graphic organizers. Our next book report will be Biographies. Look forward to seeing a written requirement and a poster figure to dress with a due date of mid-April.
ENGLISH
Hope that you are seeing our work with Daily Oral Language coming home with the children's graded papers each week. I am amazed at the progress they are demonstrating in regards to varied grammar and mechanics skills.With the CRCT coming soon, these daily reviews will certainly help to review this area. Writer's Workshop is using some of the same standards of engaging the reader, establishing a context, and ending with a satisfying closure. This time we will be using these skills to write a persuasive essay. As parents, we know this comes pretty naturally. In the area of parts of speech, adverbs are telling how, where, when, and to what extent, an action is done.
MATH
Multiplication and division are back! Continue to practice and review these facts as we begin to work with these operations with decimals. Using arrays, calculators, and base-ten manipulatives, the children will color in, display, and eventually compute these problems. Knowing how and why the decimal point moves is a huge part of concept.
SOCIAL STUDIES
The children seemed to enjoy their roles of protesting colonists, Revolutionary War heroes, and framers of the Constitution at the Youth Museum. As we continue to study the differences among these three groups of colonies, and their opposition to English control, the resulting war with England results in a new nation establishing its own government.
HERE'S WHAT HOPPING IN!
March 27th Spring Fling "80's" Style Dance 6:00-8:00
April 3rd Arts Enrichment Day
April 6th-10th Spring Break
April 21st-April 27th CRCT TESTING * See Nicholson site for link to practice
Congratulations
Terrific Kids
Baily M. (February) and Rachel R.(March)
Jessica B. for 4th Grade Cobb County Writing Fair Entry
Our CHORUS MEMBERS FOR A FABULOUS PERFORMANCE!!!!!
Tyler K. Baily M.
Mackenzie E. Leda D.
Rachel R. Jessica B.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
. Kobe O. April 6th Mackenzie E. April 12th
Hayley W. April 8th Tiego B. April 22nd
March 08, 2009
Let's March Into This Month Of Learning
Dear Parents,
Let me express my appreciation for the support of the Fun Run. Your pledges and commitments to those promises will help our school continue to advance in the area of technology. Please send in those remaining few as soon as possible. With our Youth Museum Field Trip coming on March 23, we ask that our permission forms be sent in by the 12th of March. Please be sure to link into the practice CRCT tests from our Nicholson web site.
READING
Informational text continues to be our focus. The children have been presenting their informational book reports. Having the opportunity to fill out an evaluation of each poster or book jacket has proven to be engaging and informative for all. We have taken the test and completed the journals for our novel, The Lion to Guard Us. This week the children will work independently and test their nonfiction feature skills.
Writing
With the third nine weeks ending soon, we have chosen our three topics on colonial living and finished taking notes. This week we will create main idea towers and develop and add our own special voice to this five paragraph paper. Checking out how authors begin their informational pieces and end them with engagement should help us as we do the same. Rough and final drafts will be the focus of our Language Arts block this week.
Three beautiful, purple flowers and we begin our study of those parts of speech that make our writing specific and colorful- adjectives. What are they and how can we use them to compare things? Using -er and -est is just one way, but when do we use more or most? What about predicate adjectives? Let's not count out those suffixes that magically make a verb, such as adjust to an adjective such as adjustable. Lots to learn and finding them in magazines to add to our mobile should be easy. This Friday is the test!
MATH
Fractions and decimals have a definite relationship as the children are quickly learning. There are equivalent fractions, such as 1/2 and 2/4, and 0.3 does equal 0.30. They can be compared and ordered, added and subtracted, and even placed on number lines. All of these concepts are what you should be seeing coming home each evening. With our third IMI test approaching we will also be working with measures of weight. Once again, we need your help in helping many of your children learn our basic facts. Each Spirit Day at Nicholson brings with it another chance at making our 100 and 100+ Clubs. The students will be posting their 4th IMI Pretest on the computer this Wednesday.
SOCIAL STUDIES
Friends and maps will be the order of the next few weeks as the students work in pairs to use their geographical skills to compare the settling of the Middle, New England, and Southern Colonies. Land and climate affected why and how their economies grew as they did. They will be filling up their Interactive Notebooks with lots of information about the people and places that formed our Thirteen Colonies. Be looking for permission forms about the upcoming visit to Cobb County's Youth Museum at the end of March. The cost is minimal, but the opportunity to dress up as a colonist and join the Sons of Liberty at the Boston Tea Party is so much fun. Forms and money due the 12th
Could Mrs. Jackson make it any more fun? Flashlights and mirrors? I hope that the children are sharing with you their activities and experiments that are greeting them each day with their study of light and sound. Make sure that you are checking their Interactive Notebooks and Agendas for homework and tests coming each week. Certainly not fun, but necessary, is the study of contagious and noncontagious diseases in Health these next few weeks. Reading and writing about what we can do to prevent the spread of bacteria is wrapped up in a packet that the children will be working on at home and in school. This week, Lesson 3, Fighting Contagious Diseases will be the assignment.
CONGRATULATIONS
To our Meteorologists:
Jessica B., Chandler B., Baily M. and Andrea M.
To our Checking It out Book Stars:
Nick W,. Kobe O., and Chiara B.
To our Terrific Kids:
Baily M. and Mackenzie E.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
TYLER K. March 1st CHIARA B. March 12th
BRADLY S. March 10th
THINGS TO NOTE ON YOUR CALENDARS
MARCH 12TH END OF GRADING PERIOD / YOUTH MUSEUM $ DUE
MARCH 16TH THIRD IMI POSTEST IN MATH
MARCH 19TH SECOND GRADE PERFORMANCE PTA
MARCH 19TH REPORT CARDS GO HOME
MARCH 27TH SPIRIT DAY
February 01, 2009
February is here!
Dear Parents,
Thank you all for an especially productive conference week. Your support is truly appreciated. Our success is that the children are learning and having a good time doing so. Many are already excitedly working toward accumulating those AR points, which was my focus as we discussed the strengths of your children. They are wonderful young people and I feel grateful to be spending time with them this year. Feel free to call if there are questions and concerns as we enter into these next nine weeks.
READING
Eating a carrot takes time, is not as easy to swallow, and certainly is not as sweet. The children quickly realized that it could be compared to reading an nonfictional text. An ice cream sandwich, however, has many flavorable characteristics and can be easily digested just like fiction books. It is with this difference in mind that the students have tackled books of information and analyzed their text and graphic features and the purpose behind them. For the next several weeks, we will continue to add main ideas and supporting details, cause and effect, and fact and opinion to our Reader's Notebook. Continue to remind the children to read at least 20 minutes each night and log these on their February "Book It" calendar and Six Flags 600 minutes list. Lots of opportunities to earn a free pizza, a free ticket to Six Flags and charms for their bookbag chains. Don't forget that the nonfictional book report is due March 2nd.
Writing
Informational writing, or research, always starts with a question. So for these nine weeks, the children will be answering the question, "What is it like to live in Colonial times?" They will look at the various aspects of this time in history and choose three topics that they are interested in learning more about. These will be the focus of their paper. Add an engaging beginning, a strategic ending, test and graphic features, and they will complete the standard writing requirements for these nine weeks. Encourage the children to use time wisely as we begin to take notes, develop main ideas, and personally write supporting factual details to "rough draft" this five paragraph paper.
The spelling program returns once again to contractions and the correct use of these shortened word forms. Each test requires the children to understand the use of the homophones their, there, and they're and the skills lesson will allow them to practice.
ENGLISH
Our Parts of Speech Mobile continues to add components as we close out the concentrated study of pronouns this week and begin the study of adjectives. The concepts at this level will have us working on predicate adjectives and the comparison of adjectives, both regularly and irregularly formed.
The children enjoyed the Bingo games and were able to easily change the improper fractions to mixed numbers and reverse that process. This week, they will be continuing to add and subtract fractions and mixed numbers. At this level, they will need to regroup, or borrow, and simplify when necessary. The second part of this nine weeks will see us working with decimal fractions.
SOCIAL STUDIES
The Explorer Booklets were presented beautifully and each of the students gave lots of facts and details to include on our graphic organizers. The upcoming test wil be taken from those notes and I will continue to encourage the students to organize this information by adding it to a growing Interactive Notebook.The students will move back into Mrs. Jackson's science class this upcoming week and continue their study of light and sound.
FEB. 2ND PICTURES (CLASS AND INDIVIDUAL) Will need envelope and order to ensure picture is taken
FEB. 4TH EARLY RELEASE (12:20)
FEB. 9TH TELLUS MUSEUM
Boosterthon Fun Run coming soon in February!
This coming February the Nicholson PTA and Foundation have been organizing a unique and terrific fundraiser called the the Boosterthon Fun Run. This fundraiser will be used to help with technology upgrades at our school. Please visit www.boostersuperfan.com to find out more information about this great event! The following are dates to kick off the celebration. Please come and join us.
February 10th- Boosterthon Pep Rally in gym at 1:15
parents invited at 12:45
February 19th- Boosterthon Fun Run for all grades
9:00-11:30 on the track
FEB. 14TH VALENTINE'S DAY (We are celebrating on Friday, the 13th) Please have your child bring in valentines for each member of the class. Mrs. Rasmussen will be calling for several treats for the class. Thank you to all who respond so generously.
FEB. 20TH FOUNDATION BINGO NIGHT (7:00-9:00)
WEB SITES TO INVESTIGATE:
PLEASE SEE BELOW TO PRACTICE SKILLS IN CURRICULUM AREAS!!
January 31, 2009
Learning Websites
Click on the bold phrases below to travel to sites for some extra practice...
Harcourt Math -This site ties into our text book and the curriculum we are teaching.
Math Fact Practice -Online flash cards to reinforce basic math skills.
Multiplication Practice -Work on your multiplication skills through online games.
Math Games -BBC practice on different math skills.
English Practice -BBC practice for grammar and sentence construction.
Scholastic -Learn more about your favorite book characters and play games that include those characters.
Funschool -This site has fun games that deal with a variety of academic skills.
January 10, 2009
WELCOME TO 2009
Dear Parents,
A general welcome to this New Year and the second half of our school year! Here's hoping that the holiday season was filled with health, happiness, fun, and family. Let me send out a general, but heartfelt, note of appreciation to all of you for the beautiful basket of bath and beauty products. A big thank you, too, goes out to Mrs. Rasmussen, Mrs. Bolza, Mr. Milligan, Mrs. Mims, Mrs. Chadwick, Mrs. Malstrom, Mrs. Mollick and many others who sent things in and helped to make our holiday party a total success.
READING
Before beginning the study of Informational Text, the children have been using their reading and writing strategies of predicting, questioning, visualizing, and summarizing to create a journal based on the book, Pedro's Journal by Pam Conrad. Reading it together has provided the support needed to really comprehend this era in history and helped to build background knowledge for our explorer research in social studies. We begin each journal assignment in class and it is their responsibility to add details to each writing and drawing at home.
WRITING
Informational Writing will be our focus for this next nine weeks as the children use the repeated strategies of engaging beginnings, an appropriate oraganizational structure, the exclusion of extraneous details, and a satisfying sense of closure. New to them, however, will be the task of notetaking from research to write a factual and informative piece. The topic of our research will be the life and times of the colonial period so that there is an integration of subject areas. For several days these past few weeks, the children have been adding to their Writer's Notebook as we analyze writing prompts and look for the F.A.T.-P. Can you guess what this acronym stands for??
SPELLING
Congratulations to Matthew M., Tyler K., Tiego B., and Luis N. for representing us so well in this past week's 4th and 5th grade Spelling Bee. Here's hoping that Nick C. in Mrs. Cayo's 4th grade room goes on to success in the area's competition. We wish him well! Speaking of doing well, the students just completed the second Achievement Test of their 4th grade Core Words. Improvement was certainly made and we will continue to work on contractions, irregular verb form spellings, prefixes, suffixes, vowels and the /r/ effect, and the patterns for for the /oi/ sound. Please check your child's agenda for nightly assignments and tests.
MATH
We began this new semester by moving the children into their new math classes for the study of fractions, decimals, and weight. This past week, we spent time evaluating their knowledge of fractions of a region and fractions of a set. We will move into helping the children understand and make representative models of equivalent fractions. Division facts will certainly be important as we also have the children use common factors to simplify fractions as well. With the 100th day quickly approaching, the children are being encouraged to study their facts. In order to make the 100 Club, the students must make a minimum of 90% in five minutes in a 100 fact test in multiplication, subtraction, and addition. That score in division will earn them the 100+ Club!
SOCIAL STUDIES
Marco Polo began it all and led the way for many explorers to look for riches and new lands. For the next few weeks, the children will be using their research skills to create a booklet on their specific explorer. This will require them to design a cover, illustrate a timeline of important events, chart a map of their explorer's travel, write a detailed list of events and contributions, and decorate the country's flag for which he sailed. Although they will be working on it in school, they will need to work on it at home as well. Please support them in their research and editing, but it must be their project.
For the next several weeks, the students will be working on their explorer research. Be checking their agendas for the change into their science class and the study of light and sound.
CALENDAR EVENTS
JAN. 17TH HOLIDAY MARTIN LUTHER KING
JAN. 22ND 100TH DAY CELEBRATION { NOTE:In order to make the 100 Club, students must be able to make a 90% or better in multiplication, addition, and subtraction facts in 5 minutes. The 100+Club requires this in division}
JAN. 26TH-30TH CONFERENCE WEEK AND REPORT CARDS GIVEN {Early dismissal at 12:30/ Please return conference forms!
JAN. 30TH SPIRIT DAY AND CHICK-FIL-A DAY
FEB. 9TH TELLUS MUSEUM FIELD TRIP * Please send back premission forms.
Parents,
HELP! With the second half of the semester upon us, we are sorely in need of some basic school supplies. The colored pencils have been lost in the dryer, along with the socks. Our glue sticks have lost their stickiness and the rainy weather has dried out our dry erase markers. If you could help us by sending in these items the class and I would be eternally grateful. YOU ARE THE BEST!!!!!
December 08, 2008
HAPPY HOLIDAYS
WELCOME TO DECEMBER
Dear Parents,
I cannot believe that we are preparing for the upcoming holidays already. It is the sixth week of our second nine weeks and we are hoping to complete most of the curriculum standards before the break. It will be a busy few weeks, but will be able to truly enjoy the well-deserved rest during this holiday vacation.
READING
Traditional literature has brought us the opportunity to read many great stories. The children just recently completed the difficult task of writing an informational summary comparing and contrasting three different versions of the familiar tale The Three Little Pigs. How funny it was to hear it from the wolf's point of view! Really analyzing a character by using a DSTFL Web is helping us all appreciate such Tall Tale figures as Pecos Bill, John Henry, and Mike Fink. Hopefully, they will use this organizational tool as they get ready to present their December book reports. Due the 15th, the children will be wrapping a present which will contain 5 things that their main character would like to receive. Please ask them to show you the paper that describes the assignment. Coming soon will be a novel study that supplements our social studies unit on exploration. Be looking forward for art and writing assignments for the book Pedro's Journal
WRITING
Response To Literature was the writing standard for this nine week period and it fits well with the traditional literature genre in reading . As with narratives, the children were taught how to use the excellent strategies of engaging the reader, organizing the paper to fit the genre, and include a satisfying closing. Additionally, they learned how to write a summary and an analytic, interpretive, reflective, and evaluative judgment of what they read. They will also need to provide text evidence on which to base that opinion. For this next two weeks, they will be asked to put it all together and write such a response to one of the stories they have read. It is a big task, but they are certainly up to the challenge. Be sure to stop by and read their amazing papers outside the classroom in January
SPELLING
As many may have heard, we are preparing for the Nicholson's January Spelling Bee. The children are excited about the possibility of grabbing one of the 4 representative positions or the 1 alternate position for our classroom. Every child has three opportunities to compete in a Spell Down this week, but an elimination process and a point system will decide our representatives. The Sitton book continues to have the children work with compound words and the long vowel sounds that are found in these word parts.
ENGLISH
My goal is to complete our focus on the study of verbs before the holiday . Action verbs, linking verbs, tenses of verbs and spelling those irregular verbs will be what the children will be concentrating on. They also will be using child-friendly magazines to find representatives of each of these lessons to add to their ongoing Parts Of Speech Mobile project. If you have any magazines that you do not want, please send in to the classroom. Please check their agendas daily for any assignments that they might have to practice these concepts.
MATH
Geometry has been our adventure of late. At this level we have worked on the basic terminology of lines, line segments, rays, parallel, perpendicular, etc. The students have also had to classify, label, and measure angles and become proficient with a protractor. Before the second posttest next week, the children will have classified triangles, compared characteristics of different types of quadrilaterals, and determined the rotation of figures.
The children will be returning to social studies this week and will begin a short unit on six explorers that have affected the history of the United States. With Informational Writing as our next genre, it will give the students some early practice in researching one specific explorer and allow them to create a booklet that highlights that explorer's accomplishments. I am hoping to have them complete their project and present them shortly after we return to school in January. Next up- the study of the colonies!
SCIENCE AND HEALTH
The children have been with Mrs. Jackson these past several weeks and have been working on their simple machine unit. Currently the students have been learning to take notes about light. After they complete the notetaking process, they will do an assignment to place in their interactive notebooks. Please feel free to go to her blog to see all of the exciting things that they are learning. Agendas should tell you if a test is coming up or an assignment is due. We are finishing up our study of nutrition with our focus this week on the last lesson, Safety in the Kitchen. The last worksheet is a Vocabulary review and the test is one that the students will complete at home. The Nutrition Packet will be collected early next week and along with some participation grades taken during guidance lessons,and these will be the source of our health grade for this second nine weeks.
CALENDAR EVENTS
CALENDAR DATES TO REMEMBER!!
DECEMBER 10TH MEDIA CENTER LESSON AND BOOK CHECK OUT
DECEMBER 18TH HOLIDAY CONCERT BY THE FIFTH GRADERS (NOTE: PARENTS ARE INVITED THAT NIGHT AT 7:00PM)
DECEMBER 19TH PAJAMA DAY AND OUR HOLIDAY PARTY (9:15-10:30 AM)
Parents, Please help if you can by sending in a breakfast-type item and/or volunteer to help in our classroom at the party. I need at least five volunteers to assist the children in making crafts and playing a game. A letter was sent home on Tuesday, the 9th. Thanks to Mrs. Rasmussen, Mrs. Milligan, and Mrs. Bolza for being our co-Room Moms this year. They need your help and I certainly appreciate you all and the support that you provide daily.
Mrs. Joy Crowder
October 01, 2008
October Has Arrived
Welcome to this new month and the cooler weather it brings. It is a busy season as we have lots of opportunities to learn new concepts, share food, fun, and games at our school's Fall Festival, and purchase the newest of books at the October Book Fair. Please check the calendar and this blog periodically for those dates and times. 
READING
With the end of our first nine weeks quickly approaching, our Reader's Workshop will continue to focus on on reviewing and practicing the strategies that good readers use. The books of Patricia Polacco have provided great examples with which to connect, visualize, and compare and contrast. Each new stategy map is modeled using a read aloud and then the students are given the opportunity to complete their map on a novel that they are currently reading. This coming week, we will complete this author's study with the reading of two additional books. One they will read in pairs and the other will be read independently. For each, a story element map will be completed and a summary will be written. Asking questions and making predictions will also be concepts that they will practice within these next two weeks. Looking ahead, I have assigned the children an October Book Report that will require them to read a mystery and and using the fall season, or a Halloween theme, design a two or three dimension house to present to the class. Models will be displayed and instructions will be coming home. It is so important to allow the children to do this on their own, but your ideas will be welcomed and appreciated.
WRITING
I have been conferencing with the children as they read their narratives to me. I am happy to say that many are using the sensory details, "show don't tell," and figurative language practices that we have been adding to our Writer's Source Notebook. Our standards in narrative writing will also have me reviewing the elimination of extraneous details, overworked words {"Said is Dead" and "Rest in Peace, Good and Others"}, and takeaway endings. With our "keys" in place we will be putting it all together and writing several fictional and personal narratives.
SOCIAL STUDIES
We have just completed Chapter 1 and used our Interactive Notebooks to study our land, its regions, its resources and climate. Our new text is a terrific resource to RAP {Review and Preview} each lesson before we begin. I have been creating graphic organizers to take VIP {Very Important Papers} notes that are considered testable. The WOW stands for Words of Wisdom and generally is completed at home and assesses a child's understanding of that lesson. Along with lesson quizzes and chapter tests, these notebooks will be the the basis of their nine week grade.
SCIENCE
The children are meeting with Mrs. Jackson these next few weeks and are using the new textbook, experiments, and the familiar routine of their Interactive Notebooks. Their classwork and subsequent homework is focusing on the water cycle. Be sure to check their agendas for tests coming soon.
Spellling and English
We continue to work on the various spellings of the long sounds of vowels. As you are noticing many other skills such as homophones, homonyms, antonyms, and digraphs are also being reviewed. Please remind you children to complete the practice of the skills through their assignments coming home. With each unit there is a Dear Parents assignment that has you working with your child to complete. This is the basis of the skills part of each unit's test.
This week we will continue to review the four different types of sentences and stress the importance of capitalization and punctuation. Homework this week will have us applying this knowledge and again determining the simple and complete subjects and predicates. As you browsed through the papers this past Thursday, you may have noticed a packet of papers that we do and check each day that has your child maintaining grammar and comprehension skills.
MATH
It is coming quickly, the first posttest of these nine weeks, that is. By now you have seen the various methods covered in multiplying two digits by two digits. In these last two weeks we will continue to work on area models and help the children understand the relationship between divisor, dividend, quotient, and remainder. Other concepts tested will be the use of symbols to represent unknowns, the application of rules to solve problems (Input/Output), and begin to investigate the features of a graph. However, all these concepts need the knowledge of basic facts. PLEASE, REVIEW THESE WITH YOUR CHILD NIGHTLY. Feel free to visit the links below to practice these facts in a gametype application
Dear Parents:
SOME DATES TO REMEMBER:
October 13th Extended Day for selected students begins( Please Note, if you require bus transportation home that opportunity will not be offered until the 20th of October)
October 15th Early Dismissal (12:30)
October 15th, 16th, and 17th Math Posttest (IMI) will be taken in the Computer Lab.
REPORT CARDS ARE COMING October 17th
October 20th Bus Drivers Appreciation Day and Art Fundraiser (Magnets) is due.
October 20th thru October 30th Specials are changed due to performance practice.
October 27 Our Book Reports are due !!!
October 23-31 Healthy Choices Week Here's to Good Nutrition!!
October 29th Picture Retakes or Make-Ups
Fourth Grade Storyteller's Night Performance
29th ((9:00-10:00AM)
30th (9:00-10:00AM) AND OUR NIGHTLY PERFORMANCE FOR OUR PARENTS WILL START AT 7:00 PM
HAPPY BIRTHDAY
OCTOBER 2ND Luis N.
OCTOBER 30TH Matthew M.
Congrats to the following students!!!
STUDENT COUNCIL
Mackenzie E. {Representative}
Baily M. {Alternate}
GOLD MEDAL READERS:
Tiego B., Matthew M., and Jessica B.
Learning Website
Click on the bold phrases below to travel to sites for some extra practice...
Harcourt Math -This site ties into our text book and the curriculum we are teaching.
Math Fact Practice -Online flash cards to reinforce basic math skills.
Multiplication Practice -Work on your multiplication skills through online games.
Math Games -BBC practice on different math skills.
English Practice -BBC practice for grammar and sentence construction.
Scholastic -Learn more about your favorite book characters and play games that include those characters.
Funschool -This site has fun games that deal with a variety of academic skills
September 15, 2008
September is Underway
Falling Into the Curriculum and the Routine
Dear Parents,
Let me begin by thanking many of you for attending our Open House and supporting our classroom. A special note of appreciation goes out to our Room Moms who have attended the meeting, set up our class directory, and are in the process of collecting the funds necessary to make it a year of celebration. To Mrs. R., Mrs. B., and Mrs. M. goes a big THANK YOU! If you have not yet sent in your envelope that will support our classroom please do so. It is also important that you check to see if you Performing Arts form has been returned. Without your permission I cannot let your child participate in these learning events. Just a reminder that graded papers come home each Thursday along with the week's behavior/ reflection sheet. It was wonderful that many understood my need for holding onto those work samples until the end of the nine weeks. May I ask that you sign the agenda each week on Thursday as well, so that any communication about homework and expectations is clear.
MATH
For the next several weeks you will be noticing that our focus is on multiplication and division. Conceptually, the children will be working with manipulatives to build area models using base ten blocks. These arrays will display the multiplication of one and two digit multipliers. The Distributive Property of Multiplication will allow us to use their background knowledge of place value and give them yet another method of understanding this operation. Never fear, however, for you will see practice in the standard method that will seem familiar to you. Division will follow the same conceptual path as multiplication and then we're onto number expressions, and graphing. Fourth graders will be taking an online posttest this year at the conclusion of each nine week period. This is issued by the county to make certain all of our students are reaching their potential mathematically.
READING
These last few weeks in our Reader's Workshop we have set up our Reader's Notebooks and reviewed such strategies as determining a genre of literature, choosing a "just right" book, and what to do if they need to abandon a book. With the key standard of reading and comprehending what we read, I have been using the books of Patricia Polacco to provide practice in story mapping, and characterization study. For these next few weeks the children will be asked to "sketch to stretch," {visualize} make connections, and compare and contrast elements of several books. It is essential that the students read each night for a minimum of twenty minutes. We will be offering the "Book It" Pizza Hut challenge very soon and encourage the children to document the 400 minutes each month they read. The media center is also challenging the 4th grade children to reach their goal of 12 AR points before the end of the month. Congratulations to Tiego B. for his participation in the Summer Reading Series. He will join other Nicholson stars in a celebration of reading on Setember 18th in the media Center
WRITING
Our Writer's Sourcebook has been filling up nicely. Writing a fictional or personal narrative needs some planning and that is what we have been doing. Writers learn from reading and listening to how others choose settings, problems, and challenges. This will help us all create engaging stories from the beginning to the end. These last few weeks of narratives will focus on adding the details, choosing interesting words, and writing the perfect takeaway ending to our stories.
Our Sitton Spelling curriculum continues review of the various spellings of long and short vowel sounds. Our Word Wizard Journal will be our source to keep our Express Exercise and lesson activities that we do to learn and remember our core words for the fourth grade year. Please be aware of the children's assignments that accompany each unit. They all come with a "Dear Parent" component that you need to complete with them. The word work has them analyzing idioms, understanding homographs, looking a patterns of spelling, and basically improving their writing and reading vocabulary.
SOCIAL STUDIES
We have just completed Chapter 1 and used our Interactive Notebooks to study our land, its regions, its resources and climate. Our new text is a terrific resource to RAP {Review and Preview} each lesson before we begin. I have been creating graphic organizers to take VIP {Very Important Papers} notes that are considered testable. The WOW stands for Words of Wisdom and generally is completed at home and assesses a child's understanding of that lesson. Along with lesson quizzes and chapter tests, these notebooks will be the the basis of their nine week grade.
SCIENCE
The children met Mrs. Jackson this week and are already excited about the program, the use of the new textbook, experiments, and the familiar routine of an Interactive Notebook. Signatures were required, so please check to see if that had been communicated to you via your child. They will be spending the remaining weeks of this reporting period in science with a focus on weather and the water cycle.
SOME THINGS TO NOTE ON YOUR CALENDAR
SEPTEMBER 9TH FOUNDATION Q & A AND DEMONSTRATION OF THE 21ST CLASSROOM
SPLOST VOTE IS COMING ON SEPTEMBER 16TH
PICTURE DAY IS HERE (LIFETOUCH) ON SEPTEMBER 15TH !! Monday at 8:40, we will have our pictures taken! Please be sure to send in the money and envelope to guarantee that their picture will be taken.
EARLY RELEASE ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16TH AT 12:20
GUIDANCE ON WEDNESDAY, SEPT 17TH 1ST LESSON IN STEPS TO RESPECT
TESTING FOR OUR 1ST, 3RD, AND 5TH GRADERS UNTIL THE 26TH. NOTE :WE WILL BE EXCHANGING SPECIALS TIMES WITH THE THIRD GRADE DURING THAT TIME PERIOD!
SEPTEMBER 19TH THE FOURTH GRADERS ARE WORKING ON AN OCTOBER CONCERT WITH MS. KNEUER. PLEASE SEND BACK A PERMISSION FORM {GOLDENROD IN COLOR AND SENT HOME ON FRIDAY THE 12TH}
SPIRIT DAY SEPTEMBER 26TH CHICK FIL A DAY
SEPTEMBER 30TH GOLD MEDAL FOR AR POINTS COMES TO AN END.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!
SEPTEMBER
GIOVANNI R. (26TH)
JESSICA B. (29TH)
