Greetings to our 4H families! This week we have added to our 'family' in room 117, with the arrival of a new student, Amarriana Holmes. Our classmates welcomed her with hello notes all over her desk (their wonderful idea!), and she has had more offers for tours and lunches and recess dates than she can handle! Welcome to our classroom, Amarriana - we are all so happy to have you with us! (And I am so proud of our thoughtful 4th grade friends!)
We have worked our way to the last lesson in Math Unit 9 this week, and next week we will wrap up instruction, take a couple of days to review all the skills, and then take the unit test. It has required some good hard work and concentration to grasp and practice the concepts of converting between fractions, decimals, and percents. These skills will continue to be presented and built upon next year in 5th grade. Also, at this point in the school year, we are down to about one third of our class members who have yet to reach their goal of correctly answering 100 basic facts within 3 minutes for addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. I want to encourage a renewed energy toward improving scores during these final two months of 4th grade. I am reminding our kids that limiting their efforts to practice to just 3 minutes per week (!) is NOT going to get the job done! It takes some daily practice on their own time to get better results. I was just talking to the 5th grade teachers again this week, and they are saying that any 5th graders who do not know their basic facts are really struggling with their math lessons. I see the same thing in 4th grade. Parents, if you could arrange a regular 10 to 15 minute practice session with flashcards and fact sheets with your student most evenings each week, we would see marked improvement. Thank you for teaming up on this!
In Social Studies class, we have taken a step into Wisconsin's history during the 1800's, and we have uncovered the difficult story of how the native American tribes were affected by the influx of the many Europeans who wanted to claim land and resources here. Our discussions and our research are bringing history alive to all of us, and it is eye opening. (I have been learning right along with our students, since I grew up studying about California missions and Spanish explorers!) Our new social studies textbook has been an excellent guide, and our students really seem to enjoy digging into their own research, so everyone is contributing very thoughtful questions and realizations. I love this!!
We got started on our new Science unit this week, which is Rocks and Minerals. We start off with a series of experiments, and there's no better way to grasp new vocabulary and concepts. We have a booklet of notes and observations we will fill out with information we are discovering, and soon all our spare counter space will be covered with rocks and lenses and evaporation trays. Also, our next spelling list will provide the perfect opportunity to practice some of the most useful new scientific terms we are using.
We continue to strive for daily silent reading time. Several students have discovered new authors and book series that they love, so they are glad when I can announce a reading session (and that sure makes me happy!). Our field trip to the Overture Center on Wednesday morning to see the African folktale "Mufaro's Beautiful Daughters" was a fun experience. The singing and dancing was so well done, and the story was beautifully told with just 6 core actors. Thank you again to Jennifer Deptula and John Maasch for coming along and helping to keep our group together in the crowd. I will be sending out our April Scholastic Book Orders on Monday. May will bring us one final chance to order books, and you will see the choices come home during the first week of that month.
April is flying by. There are so many projects and lessons we want to fit in yet before we get to June, so I am striving to take advantage of every minute we have left! Thank you for your support from home. Sincerely, Melanie Hannam
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