Hello, dear families. I certainly did enjoy our visits at conferences over the last two weeks! Thank you for coming. I can't believe we have just one more trimester remaining in 4th grade! We have one full busy week ahead now, and then we will be off on Spring Break until we come back together again on March 31st. You will see second trimester report cards coming home this Friday, the 21st. Please keep at home the reports that are inside, sign the envelope, and return the empty envelope to school so we may use it again for the last report of the year in June.
A few more notes about Friday, the 21st: I handed out March Scholastic Book Order forms this past week, and we would like all orders to be placed, either online or sent in to me with a check, by the 21st. When we get back to school after Break, our shipment might even be waiting for us already! Also, we will be asking all students to take home all snow clothes and extra clothing (except gym shoes/indoor shoes) so that our custodians have clear hallways in which to do extra cleaning and polishing while we are gone. Hopefully, we won't need snowpants anymore upon returning (though the boots would still come in handy for the muddy days that are a guarantee in April!). For those wet, messy days ahead, it is also a good idea to stuff an extra pair of pants/socks into backpacks for this spring as well! The last 'detail' about Friday, the 21st, is that we have earned our 3rd Reward Day (collecting compliments for our good behavior - yay!!) and we will devote this day to reading, reading, reading - and caramel corn and cozy clothes with slippers/blankets/pillows.... Ahhh....
Now, to back up a few days -- this coming Tuesday, March 18th, we will welcome a special guest to our room for the last hour of the day. His name is Mike Welch, a well-known area karate instructor. He will come to teach about the concept of Respect, combined with lessons about bullying mixed in with some of the coolest karate moves ever! He has a powerful message!
You may have noticed a change in the spelling lists lately. We are making sure we can all accurately spell the high frequency words identified by our school district for 4th and 5th grade level students, before we go back to our own (more difficult) student-generated high usage words. We will test on the second of the three 5th grade lists this coming week, and finish up with the third list the week after Break. In Writers' Workshop, we are wrapping up the typing of two Realistic Fiction stories. This has been excellent keyboarding practice, as well as a great way to practice editing skills. Thank you for your support at home if your student has been working on these final drafts at home. We want both stories completely done by Friday, so please ask your student what his/her status is for this project!
In Readers' Workshop, we have begun a very exciting and engaging new topic: Historical Fiction. Combining both our classroom collection of books along with another big bin collected from the school library, we have dozens of books to choose from. Everyone will be reading more than one of this particular genre of story over the next weeks, in addition to continuing their own independent reading books. We will be perfecting our comprehension skills with this genre as we find ourselves in different eras of the past, and we realize that we must take note of many important details for the stories to make sense! Plus, our reading workshops are also becoming like a second social studies class, as we educate ourselves about important past events in history. It is absolutely fascinating to hear all the discoveries and questions during our class discussions just in our first week on this new unit! Our new class Read Aloud is titled "Number The Stars" by Lois Lowry, in case you have a chance to read this shorter chapter book yourself. The kids are hooked already after just the first chapter!
I think that's all our big news for now! If anything more comes up, I will send you all a quick email to keep you informed. May your family enjoy a hopefully more relaxed schedule for the Break week coming up, and may we all return refreshed and ready to dig in for the home stretch of 4th grade! Sincerely, Melanie Hannam
