E-News

Just a little bit about what is going on in class: Reading-We have reviewed making connections and inferring. We're studying the elements of non-fiction in conjunction with our unit on Alabama Regions and Animals. For read aloud we are sharing a book called Flying Solo by Ralph Fletcher. lots of good issues we are discussing including moral decisions, independence, friendship and tough things that happen. The kids previewed the book fair yesterday and saw a book called I Survived the Attacks of September 11th. Many had heard stories and wanted to talk about it and get the book for our class, so we got it, went back to class, had a good impromptu class discussion and decided to take a break on Flying Solo to read the I Survived book. Please continue the conversation at home if you child wants/needs to talk about it more.

 Writing/Language Arts-We have been working on collecting an initial set of writing pieces including a personal narratives, an informational and an opinion piece. We have also written a letter to our future selves, including what we are excited about, nervous about, and goals we have. We are also working on adding details to our writing pieces and focusing in on a small moment. Sticking to a topic will continue to be a focus. We will begin collecting memories to put into a memory book and to be sparks for writing ideas. We will explore different ways to write about these memories. Please help the kids send in memories as often as possible starting next week. They will be glued into a book so if you do not want to part with original pictures, just print a copy and send that in. No bigger than about a 4x6. In Grammar we studied types of sentences, sentence fragments and we just finished simple and complete subjects and predicates and common and proper nouns. Next up, nouns and verbs  Math-We have began a unit on multiplication. The kids are working hard at home and in school, solidifying their fluency of tables to 12 and starting to explore multiplication with bigger numbers. We made a list of facts we still need to work on, and we were surprised to see that it is not that many! A list of these to practice will be coming home . Content-We have learned about the regions in Alabama and will continue with the major waterways, landforms, biomes, ecosystems, habitats and the animals that live there. Technology-We have been very busy in technology! The kids have learned a lot about Google Drive and how to use Google Classroom. They have been sharing and collaborating on documents and slides, creating and organizing their folders, and responding to suggestions and comments that I make on their files. Soon they will work on peer editing skills. If you have a Google account, you are welcome to get them to share files with you and add your own writing suggestions. Good files to do this with for now, would be their weekend journal pieces. If you have not seen their drives, get them so show you some of the projects and assignments we have been working on.

Some of the Hoover Band, dancers, cheerleaders and football team came to our school Friday to give us a pep rally and a talk about what it means to be a BUC. The kids really enjoyed it, it was the first time that they have ever done this to my knowledge. Of course I talked up the band since I have a senior band student! :) Ask your child about the "6" in this picture.

Mark your calendar:
Tuesday 09/15/2015: Barnes and Noble Book Fair Night 5:30-7:30 at Barnes and Noble

*Check our calendar for other important dates.

**Treasure Box One man's trash....! If you have any small toys at home that 4th graders would like, bag them up, and send them to our classroom!! One of our rewards on Reading Rewards is a trip to the treasure box, so now is the time to clean out those closets!

 Sites of the month for things we are working on in class:

Great sites for multiplication practice:
Knock Down Multiplication
Duckster Multiplication Practice (Get 30 out of 30 correct in 2 minutes)
Practice Multiplication with Arrays
Multiplication Flash Cards
Practice a Multiplication Table Choose Correct Answer
Practice Multiplication Tables
Practice Multiplication Tables not Timed

Grammar: (check above for what we have studied and what we will be studying next.)

http://tconstantine.wikispaces.com/English 

Reading: Razz Kids

Our LabLessons blog also has links to what we do weekly in the computer lab.

Hope everyone has a GREAT Labor Day Weekend, remember, no school on Monday.

**Math Please remind your child that name, date and # needs to be on everything they turn in. Also, answers on math tests need to be circled, and "Word" problems need to be answered with "words". I will start taking off points for these things this week. Also, the morning math we do each day has problems with stars next to them. We thoroughly go over these together in class. Unless your child is absent, these problems should not be wrong. I also stress to them, that it is not ok to just write in the correct answer if they got it wrong, they need to show a strategy that we went over together. And last but not least, our numbers will quickly get bigger this year, we need to use commas in all numbers over 999. Thanks for your help with these things.

**Content: Content is either Science and/or Social Studies. Report cards will have a grade in either Science OR Social Studies each 9 weeks, not both. Some weeks we will be working in one subject or the other, and some weeks they will be integrated, for example next week we will be integrating our study of Alabama and its regions with animals. We will start getting a weekly newspaper, called Social Studies Weekly that will have lots of information about Alabama. The hard copies will stay at school and be part of our Content Interactive Notebook. But this newspaper is also online for you and/or your child to look at from home at any time. It's a great resource and also includes videos, pictures and even reads the articles aloud to the kids. We have not logged in from school yet, but for your info. the username is the 196 number and password is 123456.

**Famous Sayings: The kids wrote their own famous sayings today during writing, get your child to show them to you from their Google Drives. :)

**Online Quizzes: We take at least 2 or 3 online quizzes a week. For example last week we learned about types of sentences, then the kids watched a Brainpop video to review, and then took a quiz on Brainpop. We took a quiz on 3's, 4's, and 5's multiplication tables today and didn't get a chance to go down and print. These will not always go home unless it is a low grade and then I will let you know. If at any time you would like to know what online quizzes have been taken I will be glad to email you and let you know. The results for many of these can be seen online, for example some of our most used, Spelling City, Pearson Success Net (Math), Social Studies Weekly (Content) and coming soon, Scholastic Story Works (Reading). You can log onto your child's account at any time and see what quizzes they have taken, what they missed, etc.

**Treasure Box One man's trash....! If you have any small toys at home that 4th graders would like, bag them up, and send them to our classroom!! One of our rewards on Reading Rewards is a trip to the treasure box, so now is the time to clean out those closets!

Repeating in case you missed it last time:

**Spelling City**--Should be underway! Let me know if you have questions.

**Reading Rewards**  Each night Monday through Thursday students will be expected to read for at least 20 minutes log and comment on the site.  I would love for them to read Friday through Sunday, however I will not expect them to report to me.  I will only check the site.  

**Math Math sheet(s) will be come home each Monday and will be turned in to me on Friday and usually it will have pages from our workbook stapled to it.  Students are definitely encouraged to solve the work on their own and then have a parent or grown up check for accuracy.  We rotate weeks: Language (parts of speech) and Vocabulary one week, and Spelling and DOL the next week.  Never will students be tested in Vocabulary and Spelling or DOL and Language in the same week. Spelling City will be due every Friday, and flash cards and sentences will be due on vocabulary weeks.  Starting Sept. 1st, you can begin initialing each night on the "year" calendar to say that you have seen and checked homework.

**Graded Papers**-will come home every other week in yellow SSC Wednesday Folder.  Please look over and initial EACH graded paper with your child and allow them time to make corrections IN PEN.  There will also be a parent signature form that you can then initial letting me know you both have had time to work together on this.  I would like to have these returned by Thursday, however if you need an extra day then just send a note or email to me letting me know. If you write notes besides in the comment section, make sure it is on the first graded paper because I do not flip back through them.

We are working on a new strategy for solving word problems that will come in VERY handy when we study fractions. You will see 2 examples in this week's signed papers. Right now it seems simple to them and some are skipping underlining important info and drawing the model. Please help me stress that they need to do this. Also, if it's not a matter of being lazy and your child just needs extra practice, here is a great website to do that. They have already used it in class, so they should know how it works. We are just doing addition and subtraction now, but there is also practice for multiplication and division when we get to it.

**Book Orders**
A separate email went out about Scholastic.

Week of August 31

Parents,

It was so nice to meet with those who attended Parent Night.  Thank you for coming!  As I mentioned, we have a very sweet class.  It is my hope that we can always work to the fullest so your children can not only grow academically, but socially and emotionally as well. We are going to have a wonderful year together in 4^th grade and I appreciate all support you are able to offer!!!  I will have a lot of information in this Newsletter.  Please let me know if I have left something out!  Looking forward to a forward to a fantastic year!



**HCS username and password**--Please help your child memorize their username and password by this Friday.  These will remain with your child until their senior year if they remain in the HCS system.  They will use it every time they log in to the computer system, Google, and other sites.  These are in their binders under the Imp section of the binder.

**Spelling City**--Should be underway! Let me know if you have questions.

**Reading Rewards**--Starting this week for homework.  Each night Monday through Thursday students will be expected to read for at least 20 minutes log and comment on the site.  I would love for them to read Friday through Sunday, however I will not expect them to report to me.  I will only check the site.  Math sheet(s) will be come home each Monday and will be turned in to me on Friday and usually it will have pages from our workbook stapled to it.  Students are definitely encouraged to solve the work on their own and then have a parent or grown up check for accuracy.  We rotate weeks: Language (parts of speech) and Vocabulary one week, and Spelling and DOL the next week.  Never will students be tested in Vocabulary and Spelling or DOL and Language in the same week. Spelling City will be due every Friday, and flash cards and sentences will be due on vocabulary weeks.  Starting Sept. 1st, you can begin initialing each night on the "year" calendar to say that you have seen and checked homework.


**Graded Papers**-The first set of graded papers will come home this Wednesday inside the yellow SSC Wednesday Folder.  Please look over and initial EACH graded paper with your child and allow them time to make corrections IN PEN.  There will also be a parent signature form that you can then initial letting me know you both have had time to work together on this.  I would like to have these returned by Thursday, however if you need an extra day then just send a note or email to me letting me know. If you write notes besides in the comment section, make sure it is on the first graded paper because I do not flip back through them.

We are working on a new strategy for solving word problems that will come in VERY handy when we study fractions. You will see 2 examples in this week's signed papers. Right now it seems simple to them and some are skipping underlining important info and drawing the model. Please help me stress that they need to do this. Also, if it's not a matter of being lazy and your child just needs extra practice, here is a great website to do that. They have already used it in class, so they should know how it works. We are just doing addition and subtraction now, but there is also practice for multiplication and division when we get to it.

**Book Orders**
A separate email went out about Scholastic.


**School Closed for Labor Day**-September 7th 


In the classroom we are focusing on the following:

READING:
Establishing Reading Workshop, D.E.A.R. time (Drop Everything And Read), How to effectively select a book that is “Just Right”, and discussing ways that Reading is Thinking.  We are Book Buddies with Ms. Stout's class and look forward to reading with them each Friday afternoon.  We love our Book Buddies! I will take a daily status check of each student’s reading to help instruction and growth.  Our Read Aloud books so far have included  Thank you, Mr. Faulker, The Hundred Dresses, and we are currently reading Flying Solo.  We have shared rich conversations and discussed the need to predict, connect, infer, question, and reread while reading. We have learned hot to do our Daily 5 during reading, and soon to learn about our Reading Cafe.

MATH:
In Math, we began the year with data collection and graphing.  We have collected data in a variety of ways, compared the data, and graphed the data.  We will continue to collect data throughout the year by interviewing each other to collect, compare, and graph data regarding topics we are interested in that incorporate numerical analysis.  I expect students to practice their multiplication facts on a daily basis.  By the beginning of November students are expected to be fluent through 12X12.  The sooner your child has all math facts memorized, the quicker they will be able to apply it to future lessons.  It is very difficult and time consuming when students are spending time computing problems they should have memorized.  Please work with them EVERY DAY on their math facts, by calling out different problems while in the car, while making dinner, while waiting for an appointment, or at any other time you have available.  Multiplication.com is a good website students can use to practice at home as well. We will have a computation quiz each Friday. 2 parent letters were attached to the email to help you help your child with our multiplication unit. Also, I am sending a hard back parent math resource book home. When math homework sheets come home from our work book, there is a corresponding page in the hard back that I am sending home that will answer any questions you have about the homework. It is called the Student Math Handbook,  it is for you to keep at home as a parent resource until the end of the year. It is coming home with yellow folders tomorrow. If you do not want/need it at home, you can just send it back to school.


WRITING:
Establishing Writing Workshop--   Students have been webbing and sketching favorite memories and making lists of future writing topics.  We have discussed The Writing Process and all steps that are a part of publishing any piece of writing.  There are 5 steps in the Writing Process: Prewriting, Drafting, Revising, Proofreading, and Publishing.  We will begin our DOL (Daily Oral Language) this week. Quizzes are normally given each Friday.  Students are welcome to take home their DOL folders home to study, however, if they are listening in class, they should not have to!! We will be tested at the end of every other week.  When we are not working on DOL we will be working on Language (nouns, verbs, sentences, etc.) Here is some great online practice for Grammar also: http://tconstantine.wikispaces.com/English


SPELLING/VOCABULARY
Spelling and Vocabulary will rotate every other week.  Students will be working on developing sentences, creating flashcards, alphabetical order, etc., as well as spellingcity.com in order to help review before our Friday quiz.

TECHNOLOGY:     Google Docs!!! (Typing; Font size, color, background, bold, underline, style; saving; Printing; Creating a folder, sharing, collaborating!!); Each week we go to the computer lab.  We began the year with reviewing what we already knew about correct placement of our hands on the keys when typing, continued with technology vocabulary.  We will discuss technology and use technology throughout the year.  Even though we have laptops, we can't print at school from them, so we go to the computer lab once a week, here is a link if you want to peek at what we do in there!

I want to thank you ALL for taking the time out of your busy schedules to read/respond to this newsletter as well as future e-news I send out. I know this is a lot of information, and as the year progresses our routines will require less words.  I hope I answered some things I was not able to say at Parent Night and looking forward to this year being a huge success for your child.  Thank you so much to those who have already sent in contributions, and to those who have already volunteered their time. If you are looking for ways to help our class, please visit our volunteer page. Have a great week!!

All my best!