E-News

*Check our calendar for some important dates.

If you have signed up for a conference but have not filled out this form. Please do so as soon as possible so that I can be better prepared for our meeting. Looking forward to seeing you!

Just a little bit about what is going on in class: Reading-We are in the middle of our read aloud book called The City of Ember by Jeanne DuPrau that goes with our science unit on Electricity. It's getting exciting! We have started CAFE (focusing on skills that good readers use: comprehension, awareness, fluency and expanding vocabulary) and working on using context clues to figure out the meaning of words in our books. We have also learned about jobs we will be doing when we participate in a literature circle group.  Writing-We have set up our ideas page in Google Docs. The kids can add pictures of memories to their doc. They do not need to bring pictures in, just add them to their ideas page. 6. Math-We are starting to multiply bigger numbers. This concept is still fragile to us, so please hold off on teaching the traditional algorithm for multiplication. If you want to know when strategies are developmentally appropriate in 4th grade, visit our "math casts" page and let me know if you have questions, I'll be glad to help. Content- We learned about Makey Makey last week during our study of electricity and circuits. I sent out some pictures last week but just added the video so you can go back and see it in action if you want. Watch this video on Makey Makey to see a little more of what it's about. Technology- We are preparing for our first Mystery Skype this week! We will be learning what it is along with what to do to prepare, how to win, and then we will learn about each state or country as we play them. We will put pins on this map as we figure out where our partner classes are. Green pin if we win and red if we lose. Right now we only have 4 Skypes scheduled so hopefully more people around the world will sign up.  Mrs. Carpenter came to our class last week and reminded us how to use Typing Club and Digital Passport and then did Makey Makey with us. Stress to your child how important good posture and typing correctly is! Ultimately they will be able to type faster, it's easier to concentrate on work when they know where all of the keys are and it's better for health since there is minimal movement of the hands and neck. Digital passport is a web site that helps us  practice digital citizenship and online safety. Both of these sites can be used from home.

Thanks again to everyone who was able to attend Open House and a big thank you to our room mom Christa Fain and parent volunteer Tanya Brasher, they have already put in lots of hours helping out our class!

If anyone has a strand of white lights about 50 feet that we can borrow, please send them in. The kids like them when we turn off the lights in the room, for example during a video or read aloud.

Have a great week!