Hello to our 4H families!
This past week held several 'firsts' for us in Room 117. We had completed Everyday Math Unit 1 - Geometry, and after two class periods spent reviewing and giving ourselves more practice on all that new vocabulary, students took their first unit test. Most everyone said they felt prepared, and results reflected that - yay! After checking the tests, I made time for every student to review their test answers with me by having a brief one on one conference to celebrate their strengths and understand where and how improvements could be made for next time. This proved to be a valuable learning opportunity - these assessments are another important way to reinforce their learning. Next week we will take a pretest for Unit 2 to see how much we might already know about the new concepts coming up, and then begin the new set of lessons. All three 4th grade teachers will be meeting early in the week to look at pretest results to decide how we can organize our students into groups that reflect the different levels of background knowledge needed for this unit. Therefore, your student may be receiving their math lessons and assignments from any one of the three of us (Mrs. Bertz, Mrs. Zeitlin, or myself) for Unit 2. If this proves effective in helping us meet everyone's learning needs more thoroughly, we will follow the same process for each unit. We will keep you informed.
You should have seen a two sided blue sheet come home today in your student's take home folder. It gives you directions on how to access the Everyday Math material, activities, and GAMES online for each unit. The small white slip attached to this sheet gives your child his/her login name and password - I have established an account for each of our students. I tried it out, and it appears to be user friendly. It could be a great way to get extra math practice in a fun way. Let me know what you think!
This past Monday was a wonderful opportunity for me to become much more familiar with each of my student's reading abilities. While a substitute teacher conducted lessons in the classroom, I was across the hall meeting with each student one at a time, listening to them read aloud, answer some comprehension questions, and conference about their preferences and any difficulties with reading. These conferences and the assessments have given me valuable information and direction for their reading instruction this year.
Speaking of reading, we began "Tuck Everlasting" this week! We have read aloud together the first 6 chapters by week's end, and it has given us much food for thought and lively discussion! Not only that, we posted our first blog entries, communicating with another 4th grade class at Stevens Creek Elementary School in Cupertino, California. They have established a Kidblog, where it has proven to be easier to post all our comments back and forth than if we were to use my classroom blog site (so this is a change from what I first intended to do). Our class first wrote out their responses to the prompt: "If I were Winnie (the main character) and I had the freedom, where would I go and what would I do?" After editing, we all got into the computer lab, and entered our first posts to the other classroom. It was quite exciting to see our writing get posted. It will be even more exciting to see what our new friends will post in return! Parents, this book is filled with thought provoking ideas and situations - maybe you'd like to read it yourself! Don't give away any secrets, though! Here are the directions to the Kidblog, if you would like to keep up with all the writing and commenting: www.kidblog.org/MissWeiss Then you must click on 'log in' (upper right hand corner) and select: Ms_Hannam and the password: tuck . Go to the page titled "Tuck Everlasting Discussion" - and you should see what we wrote today. (What motivation I witnessed today to make sure spelling and punctuation were all correct - another bonus to this whole process of communicating with new friends!)
This past week also included the chance for our students to write their first journal entries. The composition books you purchased from the supply list are being used for this purpose. These journals will never be shared with other students - this will be a place for each student and me to write back and forth. Sometimes they will receive a writing prompt about which to express their ideas, and they also have the opportunity to free write anything else on their minds, and to make up stories in here as well. I have written each student back in their journals twice already, and this has really been fun for all of us. I have a feeling this journal could be one of those things they may want to save as a keepsake to read later in their lives.
In social studies we continue to explore Wisconsin agriculture - it has given us some very interesting class discussions this week! Next week on Wednesday, Vivian's mom, Renee, is coming with cheese samples and some information about different kinds of cheese! Today we talked about how much milk it takes to make a gallon of ice cream, and there is a strong suspicion that Mrs. Hannam is just going to have to work in some sampling of that delicious Wisconsin dairy product sometime soon! :)
Due to the math test, homework has been minimal this week -hence, no new entries on the homework page of our classroom website this week as I'd promised! Time (20 minutes minimum) to read each evening is a standing 'assignment' as always. The assignment notebook should also come home containing other miscellaneous reminders about materials and papers that need returning, etc. Be sure to take a look at papers coming home almost every day in the take home folder. It seems that every time I check my office mailbox, there is another page that needs to go home with students. I have kept our blog calendar up to date with upcoming events, so check it out. This coming week includes Friday's Hawaiian Back-To-School dance party in the school gym from 6 to 8:00 (Sept. 30). October 4th is fast approaching for our first field trip of the year, and it would be great if we could have at least two more chaperones to go with us. We have three so far, and groups of about 4 students per adult would be ideal! So let me know if you can come - our bus will leave at 11:20 that day (we'll eat our lunch before leaving school), and come back by 2:30 or so. Parents can carpool from the WM parking lot, and follow the bus to the Alliant Energy grounds. Thank you!
Our days are so full of activity and learning - they are just flying by! We are all enjoying each other's company in room 117 - and it gets more fun and interesting every day as we get to know each other better. With great pleasure, Melanie Hannam
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