Hello to all of our 4H families. Every week we try to make 'every minute count' because there is so much to do and learn in all our subjects, and I feel like this past week we especially packed our schedule as full as we ever have! This was mainly driven by our kids' enthusiasm for getting started on their team projects in researching the planets of the solar system. We have discovered so many mind-boggling facts in our study of space over the last weeks, that by this point they were actually pleading to get started on digging into their own planets and preparing posters and presentations. So we did! We fit in our first class periods given over entirely to research and teamwork, and I am so proud of how everyone is working together. They are planning out their roles on the team and uncovering so much information that the room is fairly humming!
We jumped in with both feet to our new unit in math - fractions! This week laid the groundwork for understanding the whole concept of what fractional parts of the whole actually mean and how we can compare seemingly different fractions. We've also worked on some lessons in chance and probability. We will be ready to add, subtract, and multiply fractions next, and many have already picked up on spotting equivalent fractions and reducing fractions. More than ever, we wish we had two hours a day to do math! It does help that the number one item on our 'To Do..." list for Resource Time at the end of day is usually Math Work, and many get much of their homework done during this time, working with me and in teams. I still tell the kids that they should take their two journal books home even if they think they are done, so they can show you their work and explain to you what they are learning. This reinforces their new learning, and may help keep motivation high for completing every item and doing their most careful job. Thank you for your support with this. Remember that every day after school, the classroom blog's Homework Page gets updated with assignments and reminders.
In Social Studies we are progressing through time in the years "BC" studying the earliest native people of our state. We have also begun a new classroom read aloud book, "The Birchbark House" by Louise Erdrich. She based her story on research into her own native American ancestors who had settled on Madeleine Island in the Apostle Islands! She uses Objibwe words throughout the story, which has turned out to be fun for us to learn! I printed out a copy of the glossary of words we found at the end of her book for every student, and we refer to those whenever a new word comes up. Our new signal for attention in the classroom has become: "bekayaan" ( beh-KAH-yahn: be quiet) and the kids respond with: "ayah!" (ah-YAH!: yes!). It has been fun - and effective! :)
Next week is West Middleton's Literacy Week. Every day will hold a special event to do with reading and enjoying books. On Monday, the entire school will experience the same 15 minutes of DEAR time (Drop Everything And Read). On Tuesday, we will all wear some clothing with words on them! On Wednesday, there will be a time set aside for every student in the school to "swap teachers" - to hear a read aloud book in a different classroom by another staff member. Thursday is our "dress like a favorite book character" day, and in the morning we will parade around our halls and take some pictures. Friday will give us a special assembly in the afternoon with surprise guests - and we should all wear RED! Our classroom door has been wallpapered with titles of everyone's favorite books.
I have received many of the parent conference sign-up sheets back - thank you! If I haven't received yours yet, would you please send it back as soon as you can? Once I have all the time slots figured out, I will send out the master schedule to everyone to confirm our times. Other upcoming events include: The last day of the second trimester is March 6th, and on the evening of March 12th at 6:30pm, the West Middleton classes will all sing for their families at the Middleton High School Performing Arts Center. This annual program is always among the most heartwarming events of the school year. In the meantime, next week we experience "Leap Day" on Thursday, February 29th! Melanie Hannam (Oh, and next week is the LAST week to collect BOX TOPS for the school contest - hint, hint.)
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Friday, February 17, 2012
February 17, 2012 Weekly Update
Hello! Our first day of the week on Monday ended with a flurry of hearts and treats. We had a really nice last hour exchanging valentines, playing games, and sharing some very delicious (both healthy and sweet!) food in celebration of our friendships. Thanks so very much to the 'moms' who were able to plan, to contribute, or to be there to help us and join in the fun: Tammy Bursac, Lori Anderson, Jennifer Deptula, Beth Graf, Anne Lindblom, and Laura Lynch.
Somehow between that event and the early release the following day (and maybe because of those), we dug in and managed to make some quite satisfying progress with our classwork during the rest of the week. We completed the rest of our Wisconsin Regions study, and the opportunity to pore over our Wisconsin road maps following major highways to find cities, rivers, lakes, and other landmarks all over our state has definitely helped our students become more familiar with Wisconsin. Travel ideas weaved through our discussions - from the Apostle Islands and Bayfield, to the St. Croix River Valley and the northern highland forests and waterfalls, from Timms Hill and and the Wolf River to Sister Bay of Door County, the Kickapoo River Road, the Dells and Lake Winnebago, along the Ice Age Trail through the Kettle Moraine Forests... you may find kids coming home with family trip ideas!
We spent extra time with our Sun, Moon, and Planets unit this week also. We did some exploration online with space.com and there is so much there! The concepts of our Sun's influence on our solar system, what makes day/night, years, seasons, aurora borealis, eclipses, tides, and our country's history with space exploration have all provided much exciting discussion and reading. Some further study with each of the planets comes next.
Math classes were packed this week with nailing down our skills with long division, measuring and creating angles with protractors, brushing up on rounding off large numbers, plotting coordinate points on a grid, and inserting parentheses in equations. Our Unit 6 Test was Friday, and we will jump into the world of fractions next week. Unit 7 begins our NEW student journals (for many, just in time before Journal One was going to fall apart!). The unit tests will come home for your signature this next week, and then students should bring them back to school to add to their math folders for conference time.
A new spelling list was introduced this week, and the test date will be agreed upon on Monday. It is a delicious list - all foods that many adults might even misspell! :) We will begin next week to prepare for a building-wide celebration of Literacy Week, which is officially from February 27 to March 2. Every day will feature a special activity to highlight the love of reading and the appreciation for good books. We will take more time to read in class during the next weeks, both independently (students must have a chapter book ready to dip into at any time both in school and at home every single day!), and we will also read aloud together. Our social studies topics are transitioning to the early native people of our state, and we will be reading together "The Birchbark House" an award winning book written by Louise Erdrich.
Before the end of the month, I plan to send home a list of possible parent/teacher/student conference times, where you may sign up for a time slot to come into the classroom with your fourth grader to see his/her work and progress. After-school times will be available on March 13th, 14th, 15th, and if those don't work, we can always arrange a special time on another day. The second trimester ends on March 6th, so you will be able to take home your child's report card when you come to our conference. See you all soon! Melanie Hannam
Somehow between that event and the early release the following day (and maybe because of those), we dug in and managed to make some quite satisfying progress with our classwork during the rest of the week. We completed the rest of our Wisconsin Regions study, and the opportunity to pore over our Wisconsin road maps following major highways to find cities, rivers, lakes, and other landmarks all over our state has definitely helped our students become more familiar with Wisconsin. Travel ideas weaved through our discussions - from the Apostle Islands and Bayfield, to the St. Croix River Valley and the northern highland forests and waterfalls, from Timms Hill and and the Wolf River to Sister Bay of Door County, the Kickapoo River Road, the Dells and Lake Winnebago, along the Ice Age Trail through the Kettle Moraine Forests... you may find kids coming home with family trip ideas!
We spent extra time with our Sun, Moon, and Planets unit this week also. We did some exploration online with space.com and there is so much there! The concepts of our Sun's influence on our solar system, what makes day/night, years, seasons, aurora borealis, eclipses, tides, and our country's history with space exploration have all provided much exciting discussion and reading. Some further study with each of the planets comes next.
Math classes were packed this week with nailing down our skills with long division, measuring and creating angles with protractors, brushing up on rounding off large numbers, plotting coordinate points on a grid, and inserting parentheses in equations. Our Unit 6 Test was Friday, and we will jump into the world of fractions next week. Unit 7 begins our NEW student journals (for many, just in time before Journal One was going to fall apart!). The unit tests will come home for your signature this next week, and then students should bring them back to school to add to their math folders for conference time.
A new spelling list was introduced this week, and the test date will be agreed upon on Monday. It is a delicious list - all foods that many adults might even misspell! :) We will begin next week to prepare for a building-wide celebration of Literacy Week, which is officially from February 27 to March 2. Every day will feature a special activity to highlight the love of reading and the appreciation for good books. We will take more time to read in class during the next weeks, both independently (students must have a chapter book ready to dip into at any time both in school and at home every single day!), and we will also read aloud together. Our social studies topics are transitioning to the early native people of our state, and we will be reading together "The Birchbark House" an award winning book written by Louise Erdrich.
Before the end of the month, I plan to send home a list of possible parent/teacher/student conference times, where you may sign up for a time slot to come into the classroom with your fourth grader to see his/her work and progress. After-school times will be available on March 13th, 14th, 15th, and if those don't work, we can always arrange a special time on another day. The second trimester ends on March 6th, so you will be able to take home your child's report card when you come to our conference. See you all soon! Melanie Hannam
Saturday, February 11, 2012
February 10, 2012 Weekly Update
Hello to our 4H Families. I am pleased to say that we had a very satisfying week in Room 117. We continue to make good progress with our skills in long division, and we've added practice measuring angles with full- and half-circle protractors, and creating our own angles. The kids have gotten so much work done in their two math journals, their poor teacher has had trouble keeping up with them! :) I love our Resource Time at the end of our school days, where students can dig into their assignments and I am able to answer each of their specific questions. They are using their time well. Motivation levels remain high to master all 100 basic math facts in each operation within 3 minutes - it is obvious who is kicking in with some extra practice on their own.
Most of the final drafts for our Fantasy Island stories have now been completed as well. We will enjoy adding them to our Language Binders, and sharing them with you at conference time. The kids have been asking for daily uninterrupted "read time" and we will be making that a priority for the rest of this month in particular, since there are fun plans in place to celebrate Literacy Week during the last week of February. This past week 4th grade teachers met with our reading specialist, Mrs. Smith, to report updated reading levels for our students at the midyear point, and progress is evident. Yay!
We are still examining the different regions of Wisconsin in Social Studies, and in Science, we are daily uncovering amazing facts about our earth, the moon, the sun, and our solar system. It has been so much fun to hear our students say with wonder, "I never knew that before!" NASA has some cool interactive sites online, showing the revolving and rotating planets, as does "space.com". I am learning almost as much as the kids!
I am happy to share with you, as I do with our students, that our class has been receiving some lovely compliments from their other teachers recently. After Art Class this week, Mrs. Hyland told me that she just loves how positive and motivated our class has been. After gym class, Mrs. Odgren said that she has noticed how our class has become like a close, helpful community. These words warm my heart. In celebration of our wonderful class 'family' of friends, we will be enjoying a Valentine's Day party on Monday, the 13th, for the last class period of the day. We have some creative moms who have been planning, and we are grateful for them. We decorated some bags on Friday which will be used to collect Valentine cards. On Tuesday, we will hold math class, and social studies/science classes - and then pack up for home by 11:00 am! It is one of our 5 CRT Days. The following Saturday, February 18th, the West Middleton PTO is running the annual WM Carnival from 2:00 to 4:30 pm in the school gym.
We are still collecting Box Top for Education - through March 2nd! Thanks for your support! The February Book Order will be mailed out this coming week (I got talked into extending the deadline till Monday, in case you are still interested in ordering.) Stay tuned for more details about Literacy Week, and also coming soon will be a sign-up list for parent/student/teacher conferences to be held in mid-March. The second trimester ends during the first week of March. Wow - time flies when we're having fun learning! Melanie Hannam
Most of the final drafts for our Fantasy Island stories have now been completed as well. We will enjoy adding them to our Language Binders, and sharing them with you at conference time. The kids have been asking for daily uninterrupted "read time" and we will be making that a priority for the rest of this month in particular, since there are fun plans in place to celebrate Literacy Week during the last week of February. This past week 4th grade teachers met with our reading specialist, Mrs. Smith, to report updated reading levels for our students at the midyear point, and progress is evident. Yay!
We are still examining the different regions of Wisconsin in Social Studies, and in Science, we are daily uncovering amazing facts about our earth, the moon, the sun, and our solar system. It has been so much fun to hear our students say with wonder, "I never knew that before!" NASA has some cool interactive sites online, showing the revolving and rotating planets, as does "space.com". I am learning almost as much as the kids!
I am happy to share with you, as I do with our students, that our class has been receiving some lovely compliments from their other teachers recently. After Art Class this week, Mrs. Hyland told me that she just loves how positive and motivated our class has been. After gym class, Mrs. Odgren said that she has noticed how our class has become like a close, helpful community. These words warm my heart. In celebration of our wonderful class 'family' of friends, we will be enjoying a Valentine's Day party on Monday, the 13th, for the last class period of the day. We have some creative moms who have been planning, and we are grateful for them. We decorated some bags on Friday which will be used to collect Valentine cards. On Tuesday, we will hold math class, and social studies/science classes - and then pack up for home by 11:00 am! It is one of our 5 CRT Days. The following Saturday, February 18th, the West Middleton PTO is running the annual WM Carnival from 2:00 to 4:30 pm in the school gym.
We are still collecting Box Top for Education - through March 2nd! Thanks for your support! The February Book Order will be mailed out this coming week (I got talked into extending the deadline till Monday, in case you are still interested in ordering.) Stay tuned for more details about Literacy Week, and also coming soon will be a sign-up list for parent/student/teacher conferences to be held in mid-March. The second trimester ends during the first week of March. Wow - time flies when we're having fun learning! Melanie Hannam
Friday, February 3, 2012
February 3, 2012 Weekly Update
This week we had to get used to starting on Monday again! We jumped right in with beginning Unit 6 in math, a large part of which teaches us long division. Each 4th grade classroom is staying with their own teacher for this unit, so we have all been able to arrange our daily schedules to include some extra practice sessions throughout the week for this new skill. We have a solid start, and you will see the numbers and problems grow in size and complexity over the next week or two as students gain confidence and ability. It will really help your own student to give him/her a few extra problems to practice each evening if possible. Thank you for the extra help and support! Ready knowledge of basic facts is really proving to be necessary here as well. We are continuing to see renewed motivation to conquer the 100 facts within 3 minutes for all operations, which is fantastic!
Another area where our students have seriously 'dug in' to their work is with their latest writing project. At this point we are in the midst of editing and conferencing over their Fantasy Island Story, based on the maps they created last month for social studies, and then rewriting them into neat final draft copies. These will be beautiful additions to their Language Binders. Other Literacy news: January Scholastic Book Orders were received and sent home this week, and the February order forms came home today. We will give it a week to 'shop', and would like to have all orders in by next week Friday, February 10. In Spelling, we spent all week (hopefully) practicing the latest list of words, and the spelling test will be given this coming Monday.
We have finally jumped into our new Science Unit: Earth, Sun, Moon, and Stars. We find new information and amazing facts that we never knew before during each lesson, me included! Such discovery going on! There are many 'Gold Star Research" opportunities getting listed on our board. Any student who is motivated to dig deeper on any related topic that comes up during class, can research on the Internet at home (with your approval), and explore any reference books available. We look forward to all reports that come back to class, and make special time for our researchers to present and teach us more! The reports, posters, and pictures go up on the wall, and our classroom is becoming 'wallpapered' with new knowledge! (Don't let the fire inspectors see!) The kids are really proud of our growing collection. In Social Studies, our students have been partnered into teams to find the unique features of the 5 Regions of Wisconsin, and they are working together so well! It is so rewarding for me to overhear the inquiring conversations buzzing all around the room during these work sessions. Very cool!
Yes, we are deep into another round of collecting Box Tops For Education! We have a very healthy start (410!) as we complete the first week of collection today. The contest at West Middleton will continue through the month of February. Thanks for your patience and your help - the competitive spirit of our group is strong!
After next week, there are some special events occurring: On Monday, February 13, we will take our last class period beginning at 2pm to have a Valentine celebration. This week students brought home pink sheets listing classmates' names for use in labeling cards for exchange, if desired. We will distribute them during our party, and would like to also share a refreshment or two, play a game or two, or do a small craft project. If any parent would like to plan one of these and/or join us, we would love that! Let me or Sharon Pertzborn-Jensen know what you'd like to do. Thank you so very much! The kids are due for a little extra party fun. Then the following day, Tuesday, February 14th, we have class only until 11:00 am, when buses will come to take everyone home - it is our next CRT Day. One more event is the following Saturday, February 18, when the PTO is sponsoring our Winter Carnival from 2:00 to 4:30 at West Middleton. I hope to see you all there! In the meantime, let's help our kids keep reading and keep dividing! :) Melanie Hannam
Melanie Hannam
Another area where our students have seriously 'dug in' to their work is with their latest writing project. At this point we are in the midst of editing and conferencing over their Fantasy Island Story, based on the maps they created last month for social studies, and then rewriting them into neat final draft copies. These will be beautiful additions to their Language Binders. Other Literacy news: January Scholastic Book Orders were received and sent home this week, and the February order forms came home today. We will give it a week to 'shop', and would like to have all orders in by next week Friday, February 10. In Spelling, we spent all week (hopefully) practicing the latest list of words, and the spelling test will be given this coming Monday.
We have finally jumped into our new Science Unit: Earth, Sun, Moon, and Stars. We find new information and amazing facts that we never knew before during each lesson, me included! Such discovery going on! There are many 'Gold Star Research" opportunities getting listed on our board. Any student who is motivated to dig deeper on any related topic that comes up during class, can research on the Internet at home (with your approval), and explore any reference books available. We look forward to all reports that come back to class, and make special time for our researchers to present and teach us more! The reports, posters, and pictures go up on the wall, and our classroom is becoming 'wallpapered' with new knowledge! (Don't let the fire inspectors see!) The kids are really proud of our growing collection. In Social Studies, our students have been partnered into teams to find the unique features of the 5 Regions of Wisconsin, and they are working together so well! It is so rewarding for me to overhear the inquiring conversations buzzing all around the room during these work sessions. Very cool!
Yes, we are deep into another round of collecting Box Tops For Education! We have a very healthy start (410!) as we complete the first week of collection today. The contest at West Middleton will continue through the month of February. Thanks for your patience and your help - the competitive spirit of our group is strong!
After next week, there are some special events occurring: On Monday, February 13, we will take our last class period beginning at 2pm to have a Valentine celebration. This week students brought home pink sheets listing classmates' names for use in labeling cards for exchange, if desired. We will distribute them during our party, and would like to also share a refreshment or two, play a game or two, or do a small craft project. If any parent would like to plan one of these and/or join us, we would love that! Let me or Sharon Pertzborn-Jensen know what you'd like to do. Thank you so very much! The kids are due for a little extra party fun. Then the following day, Tuesday, February 14th, we have class only until 11:00 am, when buses will come to take everyone home - it is our next CRT Day. One more event is the following Saturday, February 18, when the PTO is sponsoring our Winter Carnival from 2:00 to 4:30 at West Middleton. I hope to see you all there! In the meantime, let's help our kids keep reading and keep dividing! :) Melanie Hannam
Melanie Hannam
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