Greetings to our 4H families! We have all returned from our Spring Break, and ready or not, we spent our first five days back becoming totally immersed in our subjects once again! (It got easier after that first day!)
In Math class, we are over halfway through Unit 8 already, which, as you know, had us measuring our kitchens! We are learning about and applying the formulas for perimeter, area, and the concept of scale. I expect that we will be taking the unit test by Thursday or Friday of the coming week. Stay tuned to the Homework Page of our classroom blog (and your student's assignment notebook).
Our Writer's Workshop is all about - finally - writing those Memoirs that we had been preparing for over the previous two weeks. I am so proud of our students! They are writing some touching, beautiful, and descriptive stories of memorable experiences they think they may "remember even when I am 80 years old!". The toughest part is explaining what the experiences have meant to them and why. They are getting it, though, and it will be so much fun for you to read! We should get two memoirs for each student 'published' by the end of next week.
We have wound up our science unit on Rocks and Minerals. Hopefully, igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic are now part of our students' meaningful vocabulary. They have been impressed with our own WM small mountain of rock and mineral samples, collected over many years by dedicated fourth grade teachers (notably Mrs. Bertz!). We will be concentrating our time for the next few weeks on a study of United States Regions in social studies, and wind up the year researching our final science unit for Sun, Moon, Stars, and Planets.
As you know, after mastering the 75 Most Frequent 4th Grade words, we decided to 'master' the 5th Grade list as well, and next week we will tackle the final 25 words on that list. The students are doing well, and hopefully learning to take on more independent responsibility for being prepared on time to demonstrate their knowledge.
Readers' Workshop will look different in our room in the coming weeks. I have collected multiple copies of several different books (adventure, sports, animal stories) for "Book Clubs" in our room. Each Club will read their book in stages and meet during the week to discuss and analyze the events and the deeper meaning behind their characters' actions and words. Our whole-class reading of books earlier this year, such as The One And Only Ivan and Stone Fox, brought out such rich discussion and deeper thinking, I am anxious for our students to experience more of that.
A couple of due dates are coming up. By Friday, April 12th, any student who wants a WM Yearbook should send in their order form and payment. I have extra forms in the classroom if needed. Also due that same day is our April Scholastic Book Order forms. We will send out one more order early in May, and that will be it for the year. Your orders throughout the school year have resulted in dozens of new books for our classroom library through the Bonus Points earned, and I want to thank you heartily for that! I think I will need to add another book shelf soon!
Hopefully the change in our daily schedule by adding 4 minutes to each day has not caused any extra difficulty to your own schedules at home. We find it nice to have some extra minutes for our resource time the last period each day - more math, etc. gets done in school instead of at home, which the students like! Also, keep in mind that on April 23rd, our district will have our final CRT (early release) day, and students will be dismissed at 11:00 that day.
Until next week's update, enjoy the signs of SPRING! Sincerely, Melanie Hannam
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