May 1, 2015 Update

Happy May to all of our families!  The calendar is getting crowded with many events and activities being planned for this last full month of school.  I sent home on Friday a pink sheet with the schedule of meetings, etc. that Glacier Creek has sent out for incoming 5th graders - I thought that might be handy for you to keep.  On Friday, May 8th, all of our 4th grade classes will be taken to Glacier Creek for a tour from 1:00 to 2:00.  That will be very exciting!

As for the next month in our own West Middleton world  ---  whew, get ready!  We have all completed the new Badger Exams over the past month, and our kids handled it all very well.  Over the next three weeks, we will still need to fit into our days the 3rd round of MAPS testing for both Reading and Math (approximately one hour for each).  I will also be meeting individually with each of my students to listen to them read and discuss a short story with me, again a third round for this year to determine progress in reading skills.

We also have 3 field trips left to enjoy!  On May 13th, the 4th graders from our school will join those from Park and Sunset Ridge Elementary Schools at the MHS Track for the annual 4th Grade Track Meet.  The blue permission slip you received a good week ago has the approximate schedule of events printed on the back, in case you want to stop by and watch for awhile.  We will be wearing our tie dye shirts, and bringing along a completely disposable sack lunch, along with perhaps an extra water bottle or two for the day -- ALL marked with student name and school.  This includes all extra layers of clothing brought along as well, which is usually a very good idea!  On Friday morning, May 29th, our 4th graders go back to Pope Farm Park for the morning for a new round of sessions with naturalists, gardeners, and historians.  A permission slip and a chance to chaperone will be coming soon.  Finally, on Monday, June 8th, our four classes will be spending the day at the Cave of the Mounds.

Stay tuned for news of plans for our last afternoon of school on June 10th.  There will be special activities planned for our departing Fourth Grade Class, and you will get details from the organizing parents over the next month. If you are interested in helping with this, let me know (I think the activities will involve outdoor games and goodies).

We have transitioned to new units in all of our academic subjects over the last couple of weeks!  In Social Studies, we are exploring five regions in our United States, making maps and finding significant places and people for each region.  Science has our kids studying Life Structures, and they are developing 'green thumbs'!    In Math, we are well into Unit 11, figuring out volumes of geometric solids, and subtracting negative numbers. Just one more Unit to go after this one!  Writing class is giving us new opportunities to write more deeply about what we are reading (literary essays), and in Reading class, we are just about ready to start new books as members of Book Clubs.  Being able to converse about and analyze the characters and events in the books we read together has been a highlight in our room all year with our Class Read Aloud books.  Now we will be trying to transfer that same deep level of discussion to small groups where our students will be taking on more responsibility for the direction of their conversations.

I will definitely keep you informed as we go through each week, with details and special notes and reminders about our activities.  This coming week, we do have "Wacky Wednesday" where students can come with some mismatched or crazy clothing/hair/shoes.... - our school earned this day by accomplishing good behavior goals promoted by our PBIS Team.   Thanks for your attention and support with papers and deadlines for your student as we jump into this very busy final month of 4th Grade!  Wow!   Sincerely, Melanie Hannam

March 20, 2015 Update

Happy, Spring, everyone!  It was fun meeting with everyone again this past month at conferences.  Report cards should have come home on Friday.  You may keep the sheets inside, but please send the envelope back to school with your signature.  I'm sorry I had to be gone yesterday.  My mother will reach 92 years in two weeks, but she's been in failing health recently, and this past week was a rough one.  She is doing better again now.  My sister and I were able to transfer her from the hospital to a rehabilitation center yesterday, so that is a positive step.

We have been working pretty hard lately in Room 117, and the kids have been up for it!  I am proud of them!  In math, the new Unit 9 is taking what we've learned about fractions and decimals, and applying it to new knowledge about percents.  Combining all these relatively new skill concepts takes time, so I want our kids to know that we will give all of this plenty of practice and they will do well with it.  It just takes some extra exposure, which will happen in the next week.

In Writers' Workshop, we have dug into research and note taking about a well known or accomplished person in history.  Students have chosen people who have lived in a wide variety of time periods, from ancient to recent times.  We are reading from several sources, pulling out the info we need, taking efficient notes, organizing those notes into logical subsections, and then we will compose and type these into a biography.  Many useful skills are being used with this project, so we will be at it for awhile yet.  I am pleased that our kids have jumped into this with enthusiasm, sharing new information and facts with me and others as they discover surprises about their person.  I love this!

I couldn't be more impressed with the discussion points our students have been coming up with during Readers' Workshop over the last two weeks.  We are using our own reading books and those we have read together as a class so far this year, to compare and list life lessons and themes that we are learning from our characters.  Wow!  I am printing out the list of their comments we have made, so that each student can have a copy for their Writing Binders.  Wait till you see how deeply many of our kids are thinking, and the meaningful lessons they are discovering!  I think I will have them put their copies into their Take Home Folders for you to look at before we get them into our Binders.  I will let you know what day that will be.

The subject of immigration is the main topic of our current unit in Social Studies.  Most of our students were not aware of this entire issue in either our past or present world, so our reading and discussions have been opening up their eyes.  Now some of them have commented that they are noticing more about this topic when the news is on at home, and that is just awesome!!  In Science, they will be taking their final test on the Magnets and Electricity unit with Mrs. Bertz on Wednesday, March 25th.  Plenty of notes and guide sheets are in their red folders, so these should be coming home each day now to practice and review.  Thanks for helping them a little bit each night.

May I ask if some of our families would be able to supply our classroom with a few more boxes of Kleenex and cleaning wipes?  We have completely run out now on both.  Thank you so much.

I will be forwarding a flyer about a Young Writer's Camp to be held at Ohlbrich Gardens in Madison this summer, in case that is something you and your student would be interested in doing.

As always, please feel free to email or call with any concerns about your child, or questions you might have about our work.  May all of you have a most wonderful Spring Break, one week from now!  When we get back in April, I will inform you of some revised schedules on some days, due to the new Badger Exams we will be taking.  Sincerely, Melanie Hannam

February 20, 2015 Update

Hello to all of our 4H Families!  We've survived a couple of cold weeks, with more indoor recesses than anybody wants, but... we can take it!  There's so much to accomplish in our classroom, so we are keeping it warm inside.  We've just completed reading "Number The Stars" by Lois Lowry in Readers' Workshop, and after reading our kids' Thoughtful Log entries, I know it is a story that has made a lasting impression.  We are winding down our Historical Fiction unit, and it has opened up a new genre of stories to 'get lost in' for most of our 4th graders.  Our next focus in Reading will be all about interpreting and analyzing themes, ideas, and life lessons in the books we are reading.  Which books share the same idea/theme, and how does one book handle that compared to another book?  What are we learning for ourselves from what happens to the characters in our books?  Our 4th graders have been demonstrating their growing ability to dig deeper into story meaning, and they are ready for these next steps.  It's very exciting and rewarding!

In Social Studies we have been doing some analyzing and comparing, too.  We are traveling through the time period in the early 1800's when the native Americans had to make room for the growing population of new settlers from the east, and our area's transition from Territory to Statehood.  We want to cover the beginning of our brand new state government, so we are prepared with the background to fully appreciate what we will see and hear about next Thursday.  Next week on February 26th, we go to the Wisconsin State Capitol and then the Wisconsin Historical Museum.  MANY thanks to the 14 parents from our classroom who will be meeting us downtown for our trip!  Wow!  For those parents who are going, you can plan on meeting us on the ground floor rotunda of the Capitol between 9:45 and 10:00.  Our guided tour will begin at 10:00am.  We will be walking over to the Historical Museum at 11:30 to eat our lunch in their lunchroom on the first floor, and then our tour guides will take small groups throughout the Museum beginning at 12:00 noon.  After an hour with our guides, we will have one more half hour to tour around ourselves with our chaperones, before boarding buses back to school at 1:30.  Parents, please remember to send along a completely disposable lunch for your child that day (unless they have ordered a school sack lunch).  Chaperones, feel free to bring a lunch and eat with us at 11:30, too. 

We are finishing up Unit 7 in 4th grade math, and we will take the Unit Test on Wednesday of this coming week.  It has been a pretty hefty unit with a lot of new fraction work.  These concepts and skills will come up again in 5th grade, getting reinforced and built upon next year, so if complete mastery is not demonstrated this year, our kids will still have learned some good foundational skills that will make a difference next year.  It is clear once again that the students who are still struggling with knowing their basic facts are the ones who struggle the most with our lessons. 

We are about ready to celebrate and enjoy the fruits of our labors in Writing Workshop.  We have completed our "How To..."  Books, and will be presenting them to each other, and then to our first grade buddies.  This project has also given our students a great opportunity to practice their skills with some researching online and saving information to their Google Drive.  Our next unit will be taking our research a little deeper by focusing on the life of a historical person, and practicing our skills with note taking and organizing information.

You should have seen a new bright green sheet in your student's Take Home Folder from Friday.  This sheet confirms every family's conference time on March 3, 4, or 10.  I look forward to seeing you and your child to talk over how 4th grade is going!  In the meantime, I will keep you posted on other events and reminders that come along.  See you all soon!  Melanie Hannam

January 23, 2015 4H Update

Hello to all. I'd like to bring you up to date with our activities in Room 117 over the last couple of weeks.  Friday, January 23rd, marks the exact halfway point of our school year!  We are approaching the end of several mid-year assessments!   Our class has completed MAPS testing in the computer lab for both Reading and Math.  I am also wrapping up my individual meetings with each of our students, where they have read a story (or two or three!) out loud to me, and then we discuss their comprehension of the story.  When we have conferences in March, I can show you progress with both assessments.  This coming Tuesday, January 27th, all of our 4th graders will be taking part in NAEP testing (see the letter that went home earlier this month).  This involves three 30 minute tests in the areas of Reading, Math, and Science.  Our kids have been troopers through all of these 'additions' to our learning days.

Math class, as you know, has involved the process of learning long division during Unit 6.  Almost everyone is feeling more confident with each passing day.  All students could use more practice, so whenever there are 5 or 10 minutes available, jot down a problem or two like the ones you've seen come home, and slide that paper in front of your 4th grader to solve!  (These would be problems of 2,3, or 4 digit numbers being divided by any 1 digit number.)  The last lesson of this unit does introduce 2 digit divisors, so we will be practicing those briefly (Part B on the test).  We are treating all remainders as fractions at this point in the year.  This work with long division has caused more than a few of our students to become painfully aware that they are still lacking in their quick recall of basic facts!!!!  Please continue to give your child support and practice with basic facts, especially multiplication and division facts.  We will be taking our final Unit 6 test sometime in the next week.  Then, fractions are on the horizon!

In Reader's Workshop, we have all found our first Historical Fiction books to read on our own!  As a class, we are also reading together "Number The Stars" by Lois Lowry.  This gripping story is a perfect example of what it is like to become immersed in another time period through the eyes of fictional characters.  We are learning history as we enjoy getting to know characters who represent what real people have gone through.  This story takes place in Denmark during the Nazi occupation, so this book also opens our 4th graders' eyes to a very difficult event in our world's past.  I want to assure you that we are treating their first exposure to these events carefully and sensitively. For about the next month, your student will be trying to keep up with the free reading book of their choice along with their choice of a historical fiction book.  Thank you for helping them manage their reading time to include both (or if they want to exclusively dig into historical fiction for awhile, that is just fine).

In Writer's Workshop, we are using our newly acquired knowledge of what makes an effective Informational Book, using a variety of Text Features, and we are creating our own Info Books!  These will involve topics about which each student already feels comfortable sharing in step by step detail.  This will allow them the chance to use Text Features (both computerized or hand written/drawn) to make their own book effective and appealing to their audience.  We will not only share our books with each other, but we will also 'teach' our first grade buddies when we have completed our projects! 

Social Studies class has been all about understanding what it was like for the native Americans in our area of Wisconsin as European explorers and fur traders, followed by the new United States government after the American Revolution, all brought their influence, customs, and new laws to rapidly settling new lands.  I have so enjoyed hearing the thoughts and opinions of our students as they realize that there are many sides and viewpoints to the same events and issues. (Plus, you may get some requests to travel to Prairie du Chien or Portage... :)  In Science, they are working on experiments to prove the presence and power of magnetism as they approach they study of electricity.

Our January Scholastic Book Order should be arriving any day now.  Thanks for continuing to check into your student's Take Home Folder with them each day for any notices that come home, along with papers that might need signing.  We've had some illnesses make the rounds in our room over the last couple of weeks - many thanks to those of you who sent in cleaning wipes.  We are making good use of them!  I will send you another update in a couple of weeks - in the meantime, we are staying cozy and productive with our napping polar bears keeping an eye on us in Room 117!  :)  Sincerely, Melanie Hannam

January 9, 2015 4H Update

Happy new 2015 to all of you!  It feels good to say that we are one of very few schools who put in a full 5 day week of classes this past week!  In our classroom, we swept out some cobwebs in our brains after two full weeks off, and ended up being very productive.  In spite of the difficult weather, we kept warm in our room, digging in to our work and activities.  Our kids handled all 5 indoor recesses very well, organizing themselves into some great games and art projects (it was good relationship-building time!).

We shared with each other all the books we've been reading lately, and have sparked some new ideas for each other.  This coming week in Readers Workshop we begin a new unit using  Historical Fiction books.  In addition to each student's independent reading book, they will be choosing another book where the story is set in another time period.  We will be exploring what it is like to be transported to a very different time and place in our reading, and what we can learn through the eyes of characters who lived through experiences we may not have ever realized or understood before!  Many of these stories are award winners, so the writing is some of the best that our students will be reading all year.    

The January Scholastic Book Order flyers went home this week.  Take a look, and as always, if you would like to order, you have the choice of online ordering or sending in a check with the order form to school.  We decided on a due date for orders - Friday, January 16th.

Every year at this time, all 4th graders in Dane County have the opportunity to enter a Haiku writing contest.  We learned this week how to write Haiku (a three line poem with 17 syllables).  Our kids caught on quickly, and all have been producing several Haiku during moments of inspiration throughout the week.  We will collect up all of our attempts, each student choosing their favorite 2 or 3, and we will get those typed up to submit by January 21st.  It's been a fun and valuable writing experience whether we end up with any official winners or not.  We will be notified by March if anyone in our school has a poem chosen by the judges, and then there is a program held to honor those writers with their families, with all winning poems printed into a booklet.  We will collect all of our poems in our Writing Binders, so you can see them.  I love what our kids are doing - some very creative 'word-smithing' going on!   

In Science with Mrs. Bertz, our class is moving into a new unit on magnetism and electricity.  In Social Studies, we are transitioning from the "Old Time" when native tribes had the land all to themselves, to when the first European explorers and traders found this area we know now as Wisconsin.  Life changes forever for the people of this time, and we find out how and why!  We are looking forward to our next big field trip during the last week of February - details will be coming.  We are planning a tour of our State Capital and the Wisconsin Historical Museum!

Important dates for the month of January include several days containing testing sessions for our 4th graders.  On both January 8th and 12th, I am meeting individually with each student to listen to them read a leveled passage and hold a comprehension conversation together.  We do this 3 times throughout the year to determine updated reading skills.  Also done 3 times this year is the MAP (Measure of Academic Progress) Assessment in the computer lab for both reading and math. We will do our sessions on January 13th and 15th - this coming week!  And then on January 27th, there is another assessment being given to just the 4th graders in reading, math, and science.  You should have received a letter this past week explaining this test.  If there are any questions, please let me or Mr. Macklem know.  If you could support your student with a particularly good night's sleep and breakfast for each of these upcoming days especially, that would be ideal. 

A little housekeeping note:  Our classroom has just about run out of cleaning wipes.  If you think of it next time you are shopping for such supplies, would you include Room 117 on your shopping list?  With all the cold and flu bugs being passed around this time of year, I am trying to be diligent about wiping off desk surfaces, etc. even more often than usual.  We're still pretty good with our Kleenex box supply.  Thank you!!

It has just been decided this past week that we will hold our next Parent/Teacher/Student Conferences during the month of March, around the dates of March 3rd and 10th.  I will send home a list of possible times for days during that timespan, in February.  At the Conference, I can share the updates on your child's reading and math assessments, along with their progress in our classroom units of study.    

In the meantime, let's hope we get some more agreeable weather, and that we all stay healthy!  I will continue to stay in close touch with you!  Sincerely, Melanie Hannam               

December 12, 2014 Update

Hi, families.  As you may have noticed, this past week our 4th grade level math students have been introduced to multi-digit multiplication problems. We are taking some extra days just to get the steps practiced - over and over as much as we can.  (First, 1 digit times 2 digit numbers, then 1 digit times 3 or 4 digit, followed by 2 digit times 2,3,4 digit numbers - have your student show you in their journals and studylink pages).  This has been a big, new skill for most of our kids.  Any extra problems you can throw at them throughout the next days and weeks, the better!  They all need the practice! 

Here's a special note for all parents who may wonder about different ways these problems are solved:  You will see pages in their books practicing both "partial products" and "lattice" methods.  I have looked into 5th grade and beyond math curriculum, and after this year, these methods are not used any more.  Therefore, after reminding our students how these methods work (and some kids really like them and can find them useful), we are pretty much abandoning these alternative methods and sticking with the faster and more efficient "traditional" method to solve mult-digit multiplication problems.  If any parents feel 'rusty' with this, let me know - I have a step by step guide sheet illustrating the traditional, and can send one home. 

I must say here that for any 4th grader who has still not mastered his/her basic multiplication facts, this stage of math is very frustrating and difficult.  It is one thing to master the steps of new and longer problems, and then add to that the inability to recall the facts themselves, it makes doing this work incredibly difficult and tedious.  I urge all families to give special attention to your child's ability to know their basic facts with quick recall and accuracy - practice as often as you can together - even odd moments in the car, etc., ask what 6 x 9 is, 7 x 8......and so on!  Not being proficient with facts in all four operations will also be crucial when we will soon get to long division problems and fractions.  Like I tell the kids, this is not going away - they will need to use their facts all through their school years and lives, so it is worth the extra effort in 4th grade.  I think some of our kids hope this will all just sort of 'sink in' to them without having to work and practice!  THANK YOU for your extra support with this subject!!!

On a more triumphant topic, our classroom has won the West Middleton Box Tops for Education Contest!  Therefore, this coming Monday, December 15, there will be no need to send in lunches for our 4th graders!  The PTO is treating us to a pizza lunch, with juice boxes and cookies!  Woohoo!!  Thank you for your support at home - we collected 3,029, more than double the next place winners!

Report cards are coming home today!  Please remember to sign the envelope and send that back to school next week.  You may keep all the papers inside that envelope.

Next Wednesday at 12:30 is the Winter Tea.  Our time is 12:30, with the first 10 minutes of singing from our 4th graders, and the rest of the time to munch treats and have a visit with everyone.  All family members are welcome!  Students are asked to dress nicely that day, but also remember they do have one outdoor recess after lunch, too. 

We have earned our second Reward Day in Room 117 - having collected another 25 compliments from staff throughout the building for model behavior!  Way to go, 4H Kids!!  We will use the last day before Winter Break to have lots of reading time, some game time, a movie time, dress in comfy clothes, bring a pillow or small blanket, and have treats!!  Early next week, I will contact all parents who offered snacks for that day, and get organized.  Thank you!

Enjoy the weekend!  Melanie Hannam

December 5, 2014 Update

Warm December Greetings to our 4H Families!  I so enjoyed the chance to meet with each of you and your families during our conferences last month!  Please know that any time during the year that you feel like a sit down visit with or without your 4th grader would be helpful, we can do that! 

We have three weeks this month to see how much we can accomplish in Room 117!  We have made some excellent progress in new lessons about informational reading material in Readers' Workshop, identifying text features that grab our attention and help us learn nonfiction information.  Ask your student to point out the most effective text features in any info book/magazine you hand them, and they will likely be able to point out numerous features.  Next we will go on to the important skills of summarizing and notetaking within those pages.

In Writers' Workshop, our students have already written at least two essays!  They are learning to state strong thesis statements, and back them up with reasons and examples.  We will write several more essays about social issues and important people and places in our lives.  Our students are taking to this topic with great enthusiasm!  (It helped that we began together by defending 'ice cream'.  :)  )

I have introduced "Gold Star Researchers" to the class this past week.  This 'project' will last all the rest of the school year.  I want you to have the details, too, since most of this work gets done on our students' own time.  It happens just about every day that during our class discussions in every subject, some interesting, unusual, intriguing fact or question comes up that we all wish we knew more about!  We can't follow every side road to explore these ideas during class (though we wish we could!).  So I have presented to the students an opportunity to explore any topic that really piques their interest.  They may research that subject in more detail through books and/or the internet, and even through people in their lives who have the expertise. Then they may prepare any kind of report or presentation to us all in class whenever they are ready (no deadlines or due dates ever).  This may take the form of a written report, a poster or other project, a google presentation, bring in an expert....  Once a student has 'educated' all of us on his/her discoveries, he/she receives a GOLD STAR on our wall of stars! Their names are written on a special star, all of which will create a trail across our walls, and the windows, and the ceiling....!  It is fun to watch the trail grow with stars and names, students will receive extra credit in my grade book, they learn to do research (in their own words!!), they gain experience in presenting, and we all - including me - learn so much more about such a wide variety of topics.  I love that I become not the only teacher in the room! 

We all have a request to relay from our school social worker, Susan Sims-Mormino: 

WINTER BOOTS NEEDED: If you have any gently used winter boots that you no longer need, we would greatly appreciate your donation! We will add them to our winter clothing supply for students in need. These are also helpful for kiddo's who sometimes forget their boots at home :-) Please send donations to Susan Sims-Mormino, School Social Worker. Thank you!

Also, all of our 4th grade students are planning a special holiday art project, as a gift to their families.  On Friday morning, December 12, from 9 to 10 am, our own class will be working on this project, and it goes very smoothly if I could have the help of two or three other adults during that time.  If you are available (land like paint!), please let me know. I will confirm with the first three parents who respond.  Thank you so much - this project always turns out to be so awesome!!

On the last afternoon before Winter Break, on December 19th, I would like to let our class kick back and enjoy a movie connected to our literature/social studies units, and have a couple treats.  If you are interested in bringing in a goodie, or something to drink with that goodie, let me know.  Again, thank you for your support!

We will let you know next week, but our class has HIGH hopes of winning the BOX TOPS FOR EDUCATION school contest for bringing in the most box tops!  So stay tuned for hopefully exciting news.  Also coming next week -- the first trimester report cards.  Look for them to come home on Friday, December 12.  The envelope needs to be signed and returned to me, but you may keep all the contents inside that envelope. 

Keep in mind that I will submit any book orders from our Scholastic December flyers on the evening of December 8th.  We should get our new books before Winter Break.  Also, make sure the West Middleton Winter Tea on Wednesday, December 17th, is on your calendar!  We will meet you in our "Winter Wonderland" lunchroom at 12:30 that day, first to sing to you and then to share cookies and hot chocolate and visit till 1:10. 

As more events and news flashes come to our attention at school, I will be sure to pass along all information and reminders to you!  Enjoy this busy and exciting month!