Hello to all! West Middleton Fourth Graders are the lunchroom champions! Our grade level survived the school wide challenge for neatness and manners in the lunchroom after a week's worth of inspections and an extra finalist rundown. When our students are motivated to do their best, they sure do shine! We enjoyed freeze pops as our reward on Friday. Our own class is also working on renewing our efforts to follow our classroom management system, especially respectful ways to share everyone's ideas and stories during class discussions. Everyone has so much to contribute, which is exciting, but waiting for our turn can often be difficult! :)
In other news items, the annual school yearbook can be ordered through the end of April. Your student should have brought home a form attached to an envelope, which you can return with a check for $14 made out to the West Middleton PTO. Another date to add to your calendar is May 31st. This past week we finalized plans for the final 4th grade field trip to take place that day. We will be touring Little Norway and the Cave of the Mounds. More details about that day will be coming in May.
This past week included some changes to our usual routine. Our school building held our yearly Tornado Drill on Thursday afternoon, coordinated with Dane County's practice drill. Mr. Rykal announced afterward that it was the most orderly drill ever! In our classroom, we rearranged some class periods so that we could dig into several science experiments for our Rocks and Minerals unit. The experiments have gone very well, and our students expressed and wrote out observations that were right on target. We have broken down "mock rocks" into their separate minerals, and further broken them down through dissolving and evaporation. Another change to our routine involves fitting in two sessions in the computer lab to take the Spring MAPS (Measures of Academic Progress) Assessments. We did these in January for the first time, and this is our pilot year throughout the district. As you probably heard from your student, this pilot year is not without its 'bugs and glitches' that have yet to be smoothed out, as we found out Friday afternoon as we attempted to take the Math Assessment. We were not successful in launching everyone's online test, so we will try again on Monday. I applaud our students for their patience and understanding - and even helpfulness - as we gave it a valiant effort in the computer lab. Sigh.
In Math class, we reviewed the concepts for Unit 9, took the unit test on Thursday, reviewed the items on Friday, and now the tests have come home with your student for your signature. We would like these tests returned to school on Monday, so we may add them to our math folders. The scores were overall much better than the previous unit - yay! This was a 'meaty' unit, too, with much conversion between fractions, percents, and decimals. I am very pleased with the progress shown by everyone! We began Unit 10 on Friday as well, and it is very different - involving symmetry, reflections, patterns, and some work with negative numbers. Ask your student about "transparent mirrors"!
I can see that keeping very busy and involved in projects and digging deep into lessons makes our days fly, and helps our students stay motivated, so that will be the name of our game as we approach the final month of this school year. This won't be a problem as I formulate our lesson plans, since there is SO much material I want to cover yet in all of our subjects. So much to learn, and so little time....! Melanie Hannam
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