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!

Constantine's Class of 2024 :)

First Week

Welcome Parents!

This is the site where I will send home e-news. On the right hand side of this page you can follow by email and subscribe to the posts.

It's been rainy so we have not had a chance to make our whole class picture, so the picture at the top of this blog will change as soon as we get the chance to go outside.
The kids and I had a great start to school! Thank you so much for having them so prepared in every way. We have a great group of kids in our class. Thursday and Friday we spent reviewing school and class rules, learning about our classroom, and getting to know each other.  This week we will continue to get to know each other. In math we will begin by making sure we have all of our multiplication facts 0-12 fluent and memorized! In addition to that, we will review computation skills and begin a unit on data and analysis. I will also be doing beginning of the year reading and math assessments with each child. As writers we will begin collecting ideas for stories  We will also begin to write personal narratives and study how to “zoom in” on the most important parts so it will sound like a story and not just a retelling. We read and enjoyed lots of picture books the first week of school, like, First Day Jitters by Julie Danneberg and we read Thank you Mr. Falker by Patricia Polacco. We are beginning our first longer read aloud, The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes . As we discuss the book, it will encourage us to empathize with others and to treat them how we would like to be treated. We will also begin by talking about mental images and making connections to our reading in order to better understand our books.

I hope you have had a chance to look through your child's TEAM Binder, if not, please take the opportunity tonight. Behind the important info tab will be things that need to stay in the binder all year like: our class directory, usernames and passwords for sites we use and TEAM book rules. Starting September 1, please initial the "calendar" each night to say that you have seen the online calendar, where your child posts homework, and looked over homework when they are finished. Our homework, will also be posted on our Homework Blog. This site also has links to other sites we use. We will be doing spelling and vocabulary practice online on a site called Spelling City, if your child does not have access form home, please see this link for the paper homework your child can do for spelling instead instead. We will also use a great site called Reading Rewards to log our reading each night, comment about what we are reading, look for good books and many other things. We can discuss this more at Parent Night.

Tonia Ballintine, Luke's mom, has volunteered to be our room mom! Everyone please give her a big hug when you see her! I am very excited to see all of the parents that will be able to help this year and give Tonia lots of support! There are also extra spaces on the room parent volunteer form to sign up. If you would like to, Tonia welcomes the support!

We will be using lots of great web sites this year.  Please bookmark our CLASS WEB SITE on your own home computers, smart phones, etc. for reference. The navigation bar at the top of this page will have other important links for you.

If you have not, please go to our Welcome Page, follow directions to send a message to Remind, for emergency texts from me, and fill out the 3 forms on this page. Only fill out the Student Directory if you want your child to be included in a directory that I will send to everyone. Last day to be included in the directory will be this Thursday, August 20.

I'm looking forward to seeing you all Tuesday, August 25th at 6:30 p.m. for our parent meeting. Please bring your smart phone, tablet, or good old fashioned pen and paper.

Students may start bringing Chrome Books to school every day if they have not already. If your child does not have a Chrome Book yet, please go ahead and fill out the acceptable use forms as we will begin doing some homework on Chrome Books next week. Also, echo my discussion with your children that when they bring it to school, school rules apply to sites they can go on, times they can use devices, etc. Also, remind your child that when not in use, they should be in desks, and go from desks to backpacks at pack up time so we don't lose them. They also need to have an 80% charge or higher each day when they get to school.

Snacks

We still have snacks in 4th grade. The kids may bring a healthy snack each day. Please send only the following for snack, any other food will need to be eaten at lunch time: fresh fruit or vegetables(no fruit roll ups, fruit in a can, or yogurt), healthy crackers plain popped popcorn, pretzels, cheese, baked chips. You are welcome to send extra snacks for our “extra snack” drawer. They may also bring a disposable water bottle to school each day, if they bring a non disposable, it needs to go home each night to be washed.

Have a great weekend and looking forward to seeing everyone next Tuesday!

End of the Year!

It's hard to believe it's that time. Just a few reminders:

1. We will be bringing home a little each day from today until the last day. Please help the kids remember to clean out back packs every night!!

2. Usborne Book Fair May 14th

3. Field day-May 15 wear sunscreen, bring a hat, water bottle, and sunglasses

4. Send in any school books that your child needs to turn back in to school. They all have a hard back parent handbook at home, it is called The Student Math Handbook, it is the one that was sent home at the beginning of the year. All library books due May 8th. Do not worry if you have gotten an email from the library about overdue books. We are still collecting! :)

5. If your child will not be here any of the last days of school, please send in a self addressed stamped envelope so that I can mail the report card home.

6. Our WAX MUSEUM self portraits will be coming home SOON!!! Hang them in your home and follow these PARENT directions (scroll down) for viewing on your smart phone or tablet to see a surprise we made for you, family and friends!

7.  Here are a few Summer Links that I will show the class.

LAST WEEK OF SCHOOL:
Bring a book from home each day, our classroom books will be packed up and the library will be closed.
Monday-Readathon, Memory Books, Letters of advice to 3rd graders
Tuesday- Class Party 1-2:30
Wednesday- Dismissal at 12:45 
Thursday dismissal at 11:00-Clean up
Friday-No School

It has been a wonderful year! Thank you so much for sharing your children with me. Have an amazing, restful, memory filled summer! A poem just for you:

I give you back your child, the same child you confidently entrusted to my care last fall. I give him back pounds heavier, inches taller, months wiser, more responsible, and more mature than he was then.

Although he would have attained this growth in spite of me, it has been my pleasure and privilege to watch his personality unfold day by day and marvel at this splendid miracle of development.

I give him back reluctantly, for having spent many months together in the narrow confines of a crowded classroom, we have grown close, have become a part of each other, and we will always retain a little of each other.

We have lived, loved, laughed, played, studied, learned, and enriched our lives together this year.

But give him back I must.

Love,

Mrs. C.

A Few Things

Inow Email is down again, so I'm back to using Gmail until it's fixed.

Wax museum speeches should have been typed and memorized by last Friday. Please check with your child to make sure they have done this and are ready for our wax museum next week. Speeches should be between 1 and 3 minutes. Also asking that the kids print their typed speeches from home tonight as we have not had the chance to get to the computer lab because of testing. If this is not possible, please send me an email and I will be glad to have them print it here at school. Dress rehearsal is Monday (just clothes, no shoes, wigs or hats, etc.)

Also, our class is in need of volunteers to come and help us laminate our portraits and decorate our hall for the wax museum. The other classes are asking their volunteers to come in this Friday, so if you can, and you would like others to work with, Friday is a good day! Let me know if you can come help!

Field trip forms and money for Montgomery and Brock's Gap are due tomorrow! Your child knows if they still need to turn something in, so please ask him/her tonight! I have given extra forms out if they were lost.

Day 2 of testing is over! Thanks again to everyone who has and will send in items for testing!