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
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