September 30

Fall is in the air and things are beginning to cool off a bit!

Here is what's going on in class: Reading-We are finishing up our study of the elements of non-fiction. We are using a site called Razz Kids that has leveled books so that each child is reading books that are just right! We use this site on Mondays during "nook time" and should be reading and taking quizzes on at least 2 books a week. You can log into your child's account and sign up for a parent account if you would like to keep track of how your child is doing. Our read aloud is Flying Solo by Ralph Fletcher, the kids are enjoying debating what they would do if I was absent and the sub did not show up! On Tuesdays during read aloud, the kids can log in to Reading Rewards and use the blog feature as a sort of "back channel" to discuss the book as I am reading it.  Writing-This week we are publishing our non-fiction "how to" books. We have read a few mentor texts to help us make our non-fiction books more exciting. Ask your child about the book How to Lay an Egg! Spelling  This week the children have different spelling lists according to how they did on the practice test today. Please remind them to do all of their Spelling City activities for homework except the test. We will do that on Friday in class. Math-We are busy collecting and analyzing data. Let your child tell you about the data we collected on the heights of fourth and first graders. They can tell you about the range of heights for both grades, the average height of a fourth and first grader, an estimate of how much taller a fourth grader is than a first grader and how to use a line plot graph to better display our data. Now we are working in small groups to come up with a question to collect more data to compare. Continue to have your child work on multiplication fluency, division is coming soon!  Content-We have started our study of electricity by learning about how to be safe with electricity. Next we learned about magnets and static electricity. By the end of this week we will be learning all about circuits and how electricity travels by trying to light a light bulb, we will also discover what conductors and insulators are and how they effect circuits!

The kids should now be using the app Assignment Nook to write their homework and they should be giving you their calendars to initial each night to show that you have seen their homework. You can always see our class homework blog here if you need to.

 *Check our calendar for important dates. Have a great week!

September 16

Wow our school We raised over 55,000 pennies for a total of$608.00 today! Don't forget to send in nickels (or pennies) tomorrow!!

Open House is tomorrow night at 6:30, I hope to see you there!

Again, we had a wonderful time on our field trip! I was really proud of our children. If you did not receive text updates on your phone during the day of our trip, then make sure and sign up for our class updates here.

 Just a little bit about what is going on in class: Reading-We are learning about the types and features of non-fiction. We are also learning how t quickly find information and better understand information when we are reading non-fiction. Writing-We have packed our journals with ideas for writing Now, to go along with our reading non-fiction unit, we are writing "How To"  books. We began by exploring "How To" books and noticing what other authors included in their "How To" books. We decided that these types of books could get boring so we read a mentor text book called How To Lay an Egg to help us with using our voices and some authors craft to make our books more exciting. We will be publishing our books soon. In Grammar we will be focusing on nouns and pronouns this week.  Math- We are still in our first unit. This week we are focusing on the multiples of 100 and their factors. You will see examples of this in our homework this week. Don't forget the Math Student Handbook I sent home, it will help you help your child with any of these homework pages. Some of the kids are still not fluent with their multiplication facts 1-12. This is imperative to be successful with harder multiplication problems and division this year! There are some links below to help your child practice their facts. Content-We are finishing up our study of Space this week. We have learned about the differences of comets, meteors, meteorites, meteoroids, and asteroids today and we will finish the week learning about moon phases and stars with a culminating test this Friday. Your child should have a study guide with answers.  Technology-We have been very busy in technology! The kids are using Spelling City practice their spelling words, blogs for, well...blogging...Razz kids to keep their reading skills sharp, TenMarks for working on math and we log our reading on Reading Rewards. We are using lots of other sites too. Ask your children to show you the sites they are working on, many of them have parent codes that you will see from your child's account. Here are some video tutorials that will help you use some of these sites. Remember to keep talking about online safety and have clear rules for your child using technology at home.

Sites to check out!
*Check our calendar for important dates.
Favorite Links-for just about anything your child needs to work on or learn about in 4th grade!
Lab Lessons-This is the link we go to during our computer lab, remind your child to check here and make sure their lab assignments were completed each week.
Nouns and Pronouns practice
Multiplication Practice!!

• Self Correcting Quizzes-up through a fact or just one table
• Practice a Multiplication table on Math Magician
• Lots of Multiplication sites

Solar System

September 3rd

I hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day weekend! This week will be a busy week! Just a few things I want to let you know. Our first field trip to the Huntsville Space and Rocket Center is coming up quickly! Forms and information are going home today. The due date is not until early next week, but please go ahead and send everything back in as soon as possible!

I am also sending home a math resource book for parents. It will have your child's number on it and is due back at the end of the school year. If you will notice on page 14 of this week's homework, there is a resource page number at the top right of the page. That page number is a resource page for you in the book I am sending home tonight. Each week the kids will have similar homework pages that will have resource pages for you in the Student Math Handbook.

This is our first week of spelling. We will all have the same list this week as we get used to the format. The next time that we have spelling, the lists will be different according to how your child does on the pre-test. More information about this is in the Parent Night notes on our web site.

Also, the kids have an Edmodo Scavenger Hunt that is due Friday. You can access the scavenger hunt from our homework blog post from today. It is very important that they know how to use Edmodo correctly as they will be using this program through high school in Hoover. Please help them especially with step 6 so they will know how you want them to download items at home. Our scavenger hunt is due Friday.

We are researching the planets in class this week and we will make and share a project (in class) about our planet!  :)

Have a great, short week!