We had a great transition back to school after our long holiday break. I was excited to see our class full of friends and hear about their holiday adventures. We jumped right back in to our routine here at school.
BOXTOPS! Please clip, save, and send in your BOXTOPS. Our wonderful CM PTO has challenged our students to collect Boxtops and have offered a yummy incentive! I have added to that challenge with our class and am excited to see if 4N will be able to collect the greatest amount. Please send your Boxtops this week!!! This is a great easy way to help earn money for our school!
Don’t forget…If you want to go out for Envirothon, the qualifying test will be given this week. Those of you who requested the study guide were given the information before the holiday break.
What are we learning?
ELA: This week we will continue to apply what we have learned as we continue with our non-fiction text features, text structures, and creating our two-column notes to answer our text dependent analysis questions. Ask your child to share with you our whole brain and movement learning strategies to help us remember the text structures and even our new robust vocabulary words. We will be taking our Unit 3 Assessment early next week. In grammar, we will continue to understand and apply common and proper nouns and also focus on verbs and helping verbs.
Science: Last week we introduced the concept of the Law of Conservation of Mass which states that you cannot create or destroy matter, you can only change matter into a new form. We enjoyed a fun POPCORN Law of Conservation Investigation. This experiment also lead us right into what we will be focusing on this week as we explore the physical and chemical changes of matter. We will be wrapping up our chemistry unit this week. Look for a study guide to come home to review together with your child. The test date will be in your child’s planner.
Math with Mrs. Piatt: We started to take a look at how to find equivalent fractions using a set based model. We will continue to practice finding equivalent fractions by using a peer coaching activity during guided math group time. Spiral review homework will continue this week. Again, the students are encouraged to use calculators on all problems except basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems. I strongly encourage students to write the equation that is being solved for any word problems. Again, using a calculator is encouraged so that students are able to focus on truly understanding the problem.
Word Study with Mrs. Piatt: New word lists were given upon our return to school on Wednesday. I’m seeing huge growth in students accepting responsibility for working to understand the features of words and in taking ownership over studying words. Thank you for your support with helping your child to prepare for these tests.
Looking Ahead…
*January 17 – End of 2nd Marking Period
*January 18 – In-Service Day (No School)
*January 21 – Martin Luther King, Jr. Day (No School)
*January 25 – 1:30 Early Dismissal
*February 1 – Report Cards Sent Home