Hi,
We had an eventful Red Ribbon Week! We wore clothing to represent our mottos for each day and learned about the importance of making good choices especially when it comes to drugs and alcohol. We also wrote essays about being drug free for an essay contest. Students from our class won 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in the essay contest! Jody won 1st place for her essay called, Sock it to Drugs. Colton won 2nd place for his essay called, Team up Against Drugs. Alexa's essay, Say Peace Out to Drugs, won third place. We were all so proud of our awesome writers! Congratulations!
Harvest Festival
Tonight is our Harvest Festival. We will be having fun playing games, jumping in inflatables, and having fun. Our Forest Creek Service Club will be giving out treats and accepting donations for UNICEF. Go to the UNICEF website for games, information, and activites. If you collect any UNICEF donations, please return the orange box on Monday. We will be counting them and getting the money ready to send off. Our school-wide goal is $500. We'll let you know how we do. Thanks for your support of UNICEF and of our PTA through the Harvest Festival.
Reading
This week in reading, we learned about free verse and lyrical poems. We read lots of different poetry books and classified them as free verse or lyrical. Sharing poems aloud is always fun and we did a bunch of that this week as well. We also read some non-fiction articles and expository text and used the text features to help with comprehension. We learned the difference between standard subtitles and inferential subtitles. Standard subtitles tell us exactly what that section will be about however inferential subtitles give us a hint in a clever way and we need to use our background knowledge and text clues to infer the topic of that section. Next week we will be reading more expository text and doing some more work with poetry.
Writing
We published our poems this week. Poems can be tricky to write but the children used lots of sensory words and great descriptions to enhance their poetry. We experimented with line breaks and phrases also. They will be out in the hallway so enjoy! Writing our class book has taken up the rest of the week. We are writing important poems about our pen pals for our class book. The children worked on prewriting then wrote rough drafts using information from our interviews. I conferenced with each child about ways to revise and edit and they wrote their final copy on the fancy paper for the publisher. They first used pencil then wrote over it in sharpie. I will be printing photos of the children and the pen pals this weekend and we will finish up with illustrations on Monday.
Class Books-Student Treasures
I will be sending home another form from the Student Treasures Company. They are publishing our class books. If you would like to purchase a class book, send back the form with the payment ASAP. If you would not like to purchase a class book, PLEASE, send back the form with your signature stating that you saw the form. If we get all the forms returned then we will receive a free class book. The books will be back for the holidays. Let me know if you have any questions.
Cover Contest-Class Books
We need a beautiful cover for our class book. If your child would like to create a sample cover with the title and our class name on it, that would be great. The sample should be in color and it should be horizontal, not vertical. Bring in the sample by Thursday. We will be voting for our cover, and the title page on Thursday morning. Put your name on the back.
Math-Math has been fun! We have been doing some probability and statistics. Graphing, tree diagrams, etc... The kids have done well and seemed to really enjoy the activities. We also have been doing more multiplication strategies using arrays and breaking apart into smaller numbers. We completed some problem solving yesterday and I was amazed at all the cool and effective strategies that they used. It was very easy for them. They should be very proud of themselves! We will continue with more multiplication strategies to work on our computational fluency next week.
Science-We have been learning about solutions and mixtures. We will be doing some more experiments next week and then moving on to more density experiments.
Have a wonderful weekend and I will see you at the Harvest Festival. Have a safe Halloween and I'm sure everyone will be ready for a big day at school on Monday!
Thank you for sharing your children with me! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns!
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
Friday, October 29, 2010
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Newsletter
Hi,
We had a wonderful visit with our pen pals on Friday. We even got interviewed by a reporter from the Austin American Statesman. The story of our pen pal program should run the week of Thanksgiving! Look for it!
Don't forget to turn in your art work forms by Friday. Your child's artwork can be turned into beautiful gifts for the holidays.
Please turn in your book order form ASAP. This is for our class book. We will be creating poetry and artwork with photos of our pen pals. Each of the students will be creating a page for the book. If you don't want to purchase a book, send back the form with the "no" checked so that we can receive a free book for our classroom.
Harvest Festival-Friday, October 29, 2010
This Friday is our school's Harvest Festival. There will be lots of games, activities, and fun. Come join us!
UNICEF-Our class and our school will be collecting money for UNICEF. Your child will come home with an orange UNICEF box. You are not required to collect at all. We learned about some of the difficulties that children from around the world encounter daily. We read a magazine article and read some books to give us information. We also will look at the UNICEF website to gain more information. Many children don't have clean drinking water, nutrious foods, or medicine. Some children have to work for their families and don't get to go to school at all. UNICEF helps the children around the world. Our school goal is $500. The Forest Creek Service Club will have a table set up at the Harvest Festival to give information and collect donations. Thank you for your support and for helping your child realize that they can make a difference in the world.
Reading-We have been learning about text structures in expository text. Non-fiction text can be organized by comparing and contrasting information, sequencing the information chronologically, or discussing the causes and effects of the information. We read articles and decided which format was used. We are learning more about poetry this week.
Writing-We worked on writing poems and finished them today. They turned out very well. We will put them in the hallway for everyone to enjoy. We started collecting some entries for our next narrative by thinking about family stories and strong emotions. We are going to work on our class book the rest of this week then continue with personal narratives.
Math-Input/output charts have been interesting. We used these to learn a little about algebra. We also continued to work on multiplication and patterns. This week we are working on probability and statistics.
Science-We learned about changes in matter by adding or taking away heat or energy. We used several experiments and to show matter changing. We will continue this week with solutions and mixtures.
PTA Donations-Yeah! No selling wrapping paper! Please help our school by donating to our PTA. The class with the highest donations will get a class party. We are in the running. Keep sending in those donations!
Red Ribbon Week-We have been learning about making good choices and staying healthy. We read about drugs in our health books and wrote essays for the school essay contest. We will continue learning more about this topic during this week.
Thank you for sharing your child with me! I learned a lot at my training last week but missed the kids! I was very happy to be back!
Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
We had a wonderful visit with our pen pals on Friday. We even got interviewed by a reporter from the Austin American Statesman. The story of our pen pal program should run the week of Thanksgiving! Look for it!
Don't forget to turn in your art work forms by Friday. Your child's artwork can be turned into beautiful gifts for the holidays.
Please turn in your book order form ASAP. This is for our class book. We will be creating poetry and artwork with photos of our pen pals. Each of the students will be creating a page for the book. If you don't want to purchase a book, send back the form with the "no" checked so that we can receive a free book for our classroom.
Harvest Festival-Friday, October 29, 2010
This Friday is our school's Harvest Festival. There will be lots of games, activities, and fun. Come join us!
UNICEF-Our class and our school will be collecting money for UNICEF. Your child will come home with an orange UNICEF box. You are not required to collect at all. We learned about some of the difficulties that children from around the world encounter daily. We read a magazine article and read some books to give us information. We also will look at the UNICEF website to gain more information. Many children don't have clean drinking water, nutrious foods, or medicine. Some children have to work for their families and don't get to go to school at all. UNICEF helps the children around the world. Our school goal is $500. The Forest Creek Service Club will have a table set up at the Harvest Festival to give information and collect donations. Thank you for your support and for helping your child realize that they can make a difference in the world.
Reading-We have been learning about text structures in expository text. Non-fiction text can be organized by comparing and contrasting information, sequencing the information chronologically, or discussing the causes and effects of the information. We read articles and decided which format was used. We are learning more about poetry this week.
Writing-We worked on writing poems and finished them today. They turned out very well. We will put them in the hallway for everyone to enjoy. We started collecting some entries for our next narrative by thinking about family stories and strong emotions. We are going to work on our class book the rest of this week then continue with personal narratives.
Math-Input/output charts have been interesting. We used these to learn a little about algebra. We also continued to work on multiplication and patterns. This week we are working on probability and statistics.
Science-We learned about changes in matter by adding or taking away heat or energy. We used several experiments and to show matter changing. We will continue this week with solutions and mixtures.
PTA Donations-Yeah! No selling wrapping paper! Please help our school by donating to our PTA. The class with the highest donations will get a class party. We are in the running. Keep sending in those donations!
Red Ribbon Week-We have been learning about making good choices and staying healthy. We read about drugs in our health books and wrote essays for the school essay contest. We will continue learning more about this topic during this week.
Thank you for sharing your child with me! I learned a lot at my training last week but missed the kids! I was very happy to be back!
Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Newsletter-First Touchdown out of the Entire School!
Hello,
Your children have been doing a wonderful job being social but respectful in the cafeteria. The classes earn yards on a football field for each green cup or great day in the cafeteria. We have had just a few yellow cups but we've been steadily marching up that football field this year. Our class, Bartholomew's Bats, were the FIRST class in the entire school to make a touchdown! This means that we have earned a Reward Party!
Reward Party!!!!! Yeah!!!!
We have decided to celebrate our HOWL behavior by having a pajama day AND an electronics party on Monday, October 18. The children are encouraged to wear pajamas
(they still need to meet dress code). The students may bring in ONE electronic item. No cell phones, please. It must be able to fit in their back pack because it will remain in the backpack until the party at the end of the day. Any games that come to school for the party must be rated E for Everyone. I-Pods or MP3 players are only listened to by the person who brought in the I-Pod or MP3 player. If your child or you are not comfortable bringing in an expensive and special electronic item from home, that is completely understandable. The school laptops will be available to play games from our links page on our web page. Let me know if I forgot anything about electronics parties or if you have any questions or concerns about our party. The children are VERY excited!
Reading-This week in reading we read lots of traditional tales (fairy tales, legends, myths, fables, tall tales, etc...) and have been independently choosing projects from a project menu to complete about the books read. We also have been practicing making inferences as we read. (Background Knowledge + Text Clues = Inference) We used a book by Jane Yolen called Encounter on Tuesday. It is a book about Columbus written from a Native boy's point of view. I read it to them without using the illustrations and they did an amazing job using the context and their knowledge to make inferences. We also read an article about the Titanic and made inferences about the meanings of tricky words in the article. We will be doing more work with expository text (nonfiction) and procedural text this week. We will be looking at the text structure to help us comprehend the material in a more effective way.
Writing-A variety of poetry books were read this week by your children. They were immersed in poems to give them some models to try writing our own poems. We each took an entry from our writer's notebook and underlined key phrases or important parts. Then we listed those parts and thought about how we could turn our words into poetry. This is not an easy task but the poems written by your children are creative, poetic, expressive, and just plain amazing! We will be finishing these up next week and publishing them. I think you will be impressed. We will also be writing essays for the Red Ribbon Week Contest which is due on Oct. 25.
Math-Who ever thought algebra was difficult? Your children are working hard and figuring out how to apply algebraic equations to patterns and tables. They are doing quite well. We are using models to show the patterns and then using drawings and numbers to progress from the concrete to the abstract. We will continue to practice our multiplication, addition, and subtraction using problem solving with patterns and tables next week. Thank you for your continued help at home practicing math facts and finding real life situations to practice math in daily life.
Science-We have been classifying matter this week. We did a demonstration using balloons to show density and various liquids which stack themselves in layers in a graduated cylinder depending on their density. We completed a webquest about density and practice weighing objects in grams using triple beam balances. We will continue next week learning about changing states of matter.
Next week, I will be at a three day training to become TAG (talented and gifted) certified. I will have a substitute teacher on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I am excited to go to this training to learn more about challenging your children and pushing them academically and creatively. This class is full of kids who need this extra nudge. I think that they will be excited as well!
Friday, October 22-PEN PAL VISIT TO FOREST CREEK! Our pen pals will be coming to our school on Friday. We are so excited to see them again. We made fall-themed invitations from each child to encourage them all to attend. We will be interviewing them about their favorite holidays and hopefully hear some exciting holiday stories from their lives. We will also interview them about their favorite things as children and compare them to our own favorite things now. The children and the pen pals will create some fall art projects together and will also enjoy a snack prepared by the children after reading and following procedural texts or recipes. (see reading above)
It would be wonderful to have at least four parent volunteers to help with the activities. I plan to have four tables set up in the library and have the pen pals and children stay at one table while we move the activities from one table to the next until everyone has completed all four activities. The pen pals should be arriving at about 10:30 and staying until almost 12:00. We would love to have your assistance if you are available. It is also wonderful to see the children and the elders interact. Let me know if you can come!
Dates to remember:
PTA donations being collected until Oct. 29-Haniya won a door prize already! Thanks to those who have supported our PTA.
October 25-29= Red Ribbon Week
October 29=Harvest Festival at FCE from 5-8pm
November 4=PTA Reflections Contest entries due
Have a wonderful weekend! Please contact me with any questions or concerns. Thank you for sharing your child with me.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
Your children have been doing a wonderful job being social but respectful in the cafeteria. The classes earn yards on a football field for each green cup or great day in the cafeteria. We have had just a few yellow cups but we've been steadily marching up that football field this year. Our class, Bartholomew's Bats, were the FIRST class in the entire school to make a touchdown! This means that we have earned a Reward Party!
Reward Party!!!!! Yeah!!!!
We have decided to celebrate our HOWL behavior by having a pajama day AND an electronics party on Monday, October 18. The children are encouraged to wear pajamas
(they still need to meet dress code). The students may bring in ONE electronic item. No cell phones, please. It must be able to fit in their back pack because it will remain in the backpack until the party at the end of the day. Any games that come to school for the party must be rated E for Everyone. I-Pods or MP3 players are only listened to by the person who brought in the I-Pod or MP3 player. If your child or you are not comfortable bringing in an expensive and special electronic item from home, that is completely understandable. The school laptops will be available to play games from our links page on our web page. Let me know if I forgot anything about electronics parties or if you have any questions or concerns about our party. The children are VERY excited!
Reading-This week in reading we read lots of traditional tales (fairy tales, legends, myths, fables, tall tales, etc...) and have been independently choosing projects from a project menu to complete about the books read. We also have been practicing making inferences as we read. (Background Knowledge + Text Clues = Inference) We used a book by Jane Yolen called Encounter on Tuesday. It is a book about Columbus written from a Native boy's point of view. I read it to them without using the illustrations and they did an amazing job using the context and their knowledge to make inferences. We also read an article about the Titanic and made inferences about the meanings of tricky words in the article. We will be doing more work with expository text (nonfiction) and procedural text this week. We will be looking at the text structure to help us comprehend the material in a more effective way.
Writing-A variety of poetry books were read this week by your children. They were immersed in poems to give them some models to try writing our own poems. We each took an entry from our writer's notebook and underlined key phrases or important parts. Then we listed those parts and thought about how we could turn our words into poetry. This is not an easy task but the poems written by your children are creative, poetic, expressive, and just plain amazing! We will be finishing these up next week and publishing them. I think you will be impressed. We will also be writing essays for the Red Ribbon Week Contest which is due on Oct. 25.
Math-Who ever thought algebra was difficult? Your children are working hard and figuring out how to apply algebraic equations to patterns and tables. They are doing quite well. We are using models to show the patterns and then using drawings and numbers to progress from the concrete to the abstract. We will continue to practice our multiplication, addition, and subtraction using problem solving with patterns and tables next week. Thank you for your continued help at home practicing math facts and finding real life situations to practice math in daily life.
Science-We have been classifying matter this week. We did a demonstration using balloons to show density and various liquids which stack themselves in layers in a graduated cylinder depending on their density. We completed a webquest about density and practice weighing objects in grams using triple beam balances. We will continue next week learning about changing states of matter.
Next week, I will be at a three day training to become TAG (talented and gifted) certified. I will have a substitute teacher on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I am excited to go to this training to learn more about challenging your children and pushing them academically and creatively. This class is full of kids who need this extra nudge. I think that they will be excited as well!
Friday, October 22-PEN PAL VISIT TO FOREST CREEK! Our pen pals will be coming to our school on Friday. We are so excited to see them again. We made fall-themed invitations from each child to encourage them all to attend. We will be interviewing them about their favorite holidays and hopefully hear some exciting holiday stories from their lives. We will also interview them about their favorite things as children and compare them to our own favorite things now. The children and the pen pals will create some fall art projects together and will also enjoy a snack prepared by the children after reading and following procedural texts or recipes. (see reading above)
It would be wonderful to have at least four parent volunteers to help with the activities. I plan to have four tables set up in the library and have the pen pals and children stay at one table while we move the activities from one table to the next until everyone has completed all four activities. The pen pals should be arriving at about 10:30 and staying until almost 12:00. We would love to have your assistance if you are available. It is also wonderful to see the children and the elders interact. Let me know if you can come!
Dates to remember:
PTA donations being collected until Oct. 29-Haniya won a door prize already! Thanks to those who have supported our PTA.
October 25-29= Red Ribbon Week
October 29=Harvest Festival at FCE from 5-8pm
November 4=PTA Reflections Contest entries due
Have a wonderful weekend! Please contact me with any questions or concerns. Thank you for sharing your child with me.
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
Monday, October 11, 2010
Goal Setting
What do you think about setting goals for yourself? We set year long goals for you during your conferences. Do you ever set up short goals for yourself? Does setting goals seem to help you? Tell us what you think. Read other people's comments and make your own comments in response to them. Happy Blogging!!!!!
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Newsletter-Conference Week
Hi!
Happy Columbus Day! I will see a bunch of you today for Parent-Teacher-Student conferences. I saw some of you last week and I'll see some more later this week. I look forward to meeting with each of you to discuss your child's progress so far and his/her goals for fourth grade. It is very exciting!
I was so proud of your children on Friday afternoon. We had our first Author's Tea of the year. Each student has gone through the writing process with one of their entries and created a wonderful person narrative. Our class will be reading buddies with Mrs. Garcia's first grade class. We invited our reading buddies to come to our classroom and listen to our stories. We chatted with our new friends then shared our writing. Then we shared some snacks. It was a huge success! We will be reading our writing to our Pen Pals when they come to our school for the next visit on October 22. Parents and families will be invited to our next Author's Tea.
On Tuesday, we will read some of our classmates stories and write down specific parts of the writing that we really liked or admired. The lists will be long. These stories contained lots of details, strong descriptions, zooming in on the most important parts, great leads and conclusions. We are working on making our stories more detailed with strong words that add to our stories, telling true and exact details about the most important parts to let the reader feel like he/she is there with the writer, as well as being sure to include exciting leads and thoughtful conclusions. We are off to a great start with our writing this year. Sharing our stories is important because it gives us a purpose for writing and an authentic audience.
Reading- In reading we have been reading traditional tales such as fables, fairy tales, folktales, myths, tall tales, and legends. We have been discussing the elements of each type of story and will be working on some projects with these books.
Writing-We will be reading some poems and publishing a personal narrative poem by Friday. It will be amazing.
Math-We are continuing to work on multiplication strategies and began doing some algebra using patterns and tables. We are using creative strategies, manipulatives, drawings, and sharing to figure out these strategies.
Science-Classifying mass is our topic. We did an exploration with magnets and objects and determined if they could be attracted through paper, plastic, and water. We also did a web quest and learned about mass, density, and inertia. We will continue with these concepts this week.
The Book Fair is beginning this week. Come and find some new titles for your child.
Picture Day is on Wednesday.
Thank you for sharing your children with me. Let me know if you have any concerns or questions.
Have a great week!
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
Happy Columbus Day! I will see a bunch of you today for Parent-Teacher-Student conferences. I saw some of you last week and I'll see some more later this week. I look forward to meeting with each of you to discuss your child's progress so far and his/her goals for fourth grade. It is very exciting!
I was so proud of your children on Friday afternoon. We had our first Author's Tea of the year. Each student has gone through the writing process with one of their entries and created a wonderful person narrative. Our class will be reading buddies with Mrs. Garcia's first grade class. We invited our reading buddies to come to our classroom and listen to our stories. We chatted with our new friends then shared our writing. Then we shared some snacks. It was a huge success! We will be reading our writing to our Pen Pals when they come to our school for the next visit on October 22. Parents and families will be invited to our next Author's Tea.
On Tuesday, we will read some of our classmates stories and write down specific parts of the writing that we really liked or admired. The lists will be long. These stories contained lots of details, strong descriptions, zooming in on the most important parts, great leads and conclusions. We are working on making our stories more detailed with strong words that add to our stories, telling true and exact details about the most important parts to let the reader feel like he/she is there with the writer, as well as being sure to include exciting leads and thoughtful conclusions. We are off to a great start with our writing this year. Sharing our stories is important because it gives us a purpose for writing and an authentic audience.
Reading- In reading we have been reading traditional tales such as fables, fairy tales, folktales, myths, tall tales, and legends. We have been discussing the elements of each type of story and will be working on some projects with these books.
Writing-We will be reading some poems and publishing a personal narrative poem by Friday. It will be amazing.
Math-We are continuing to work on multiplication strategies and began doing some algebra using patterns and tables. We are using creative strategies, manipulatives, drawings, and sharing to figure out these strategies.
Science-Classifying mass is our topic. We did an exploration with magnets and objects and determined if they could be attracted through paper, plastic, and water. We also did a web quest and learned about mass, density, and inertia. We will continue with these concepts this week.
The Book Fair is beginning this week. Come and find some new titles for your child.
Picture Day is on Wednesday.
Thank you for sharing your children with me. Let me know if you have any concerns or questions.
Have a great week!
Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Multiplication!
How do you feel about multiplication? What strategies are easy for you? What strategies are hard for you?
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Awesome Week!
Hi,
We had another awesome week! Our field trip on Monday to meet our pen pals at The Court Retirement Facility was wonderful! The residents were so excited to meet the children. The kids created a list of questions that they wanted to use to interview their pen pals so we conducted interviews. Then we played some games like multiplication bingo and Keep the Balloon in the Air with a Fly Swatter game. (I don't know if it has a real name!) We also drew a picture together of our favorite things which we are making into a paper quilt for our pen pals to keep in their activities room. The paper quilt will also contain photos of the children and the residents. We will be writing letters to them this week. Erin, the activities director at The Court, and I have planned dates for monthly visits for the rest of the year. I have to check with the office to be sure that we can have our visits on those particular days. Our pen pals will be coming to visit us in October. We will be meeting in the library. I need to confirm the date with the librarian and our office and then will let you know. We would love to have you come and enjoy our pen pals with us!
In Social Studies, we rotated teachers and learned about the regions of Texas, the cities and rivers, Native Americans in Texas, and longitude and latitude. It was very nice to meet all of the fourth graders and for all of the students to get to know the teachers a little. We reviewed regions by decorating a giant cookie shaped like Texas. We used icing with food coloring to represent the four major regions. Twizzlers represented rivers. Gumdrops were mountains, Red Hots were cities, and Skittles were resources and products. We used maps in the textbook as a resource. I will be posting photos of the cookies on our blog. Check them out! We will be having a test on Texas Regions, Map Skills, and Native Americans on Tuesday.
We had a fun and educational science assembly on Thursday! A scientist from Mad Science came and taught us about sound waves and sound. Ask your child about some of the demonstrations that she did for us.
We took our first fourth grade benchmark. It was a writing benchmark and we spent a lot of the day on Wednesday writing our compositions. The children did a wonderful job showing skills and techniques that they've learned this year. This benchmark helps us to practice the testing format of the writing TAKS test that the students will be taking in the beginning of March.
Be sure to practice math facts with your child everyday, if possible. Basic addition and subtraction should be automatic for them. Most of the multiplication facts from 0x 0 to 12X 12 should be almost automatic. Thank you for working on this with your child.
Conferences are taking place this week afterschool and next week. If you still need a conference time, let me know. Your child should come with you to our conference so that they can talk about their goals and progress so far.
Remember:
Forest Creek Service Club-meeting afterschool on Monday until 3:45.
OLSAT testing on Monday, October 4.
Social Studies test on Tuesday, October 5.
Oct.5 SEPAC Monthly Parent Coffee & PTA Meeting in the library @ 6:30 pm
Oct. 6 1st Walk to School Wednesday,
TAKS Accountability Review Meeting in the library @ 4:00 pm
Oct. 7 Pre K, Kinder, 1st, 3rd, and 5th Vision and Hearing Screening
Parenting with Love and Logic Brown Bag Lunch Book Club
Oct. 8 Pre K, Kinder, 1st, 3rd, and 5th Vision and Hearing Screening
Oct. 11 No School (Columbus Day)--Parent Teacher Conferences
Oct. 11- 15 Book Fair in the library
Oct. 29 Harvest Fest from 5-8 pm
Nov. 6 2010 Parent Summit 9 am - 4 pm at McNeil HS
Have a wonderul week! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
We had another awesome week! Our field trip on Monday to meet our pen pals at The Court Retirement Facility was wonderful! The residents were so excited to meet the children. The kids created a list of questions that they wanted to use to interview their pen pals so we conducted interviews. Then we played some games like multiplication bingo and Keep the Balloon in the Air with a Fly Swatter game. (I don't know if it has a real name!) We also drew a picture together of our favorite things which we are making into a paper quilt for our pen pals to keep in their activities room. The paper quilt will also contain photos of the children and the residents. We will be writing letters to them this week. Erin, the activities director at The Court, and I have planned dates for monthly visits for the rest of the year. I have to check with the office to be sure that we can have our visits on those particular days. Our pen pals will be coming to visit us in October. We will be meeting in the library. I need to confirm the date with the librarian and our office and then will let you know. We would love to have you come and enjoy our pen pals with us!
In Social Studies, we rotated teachers and learned about the regions of Texas, the cities and rivers, Native Americans in Texas, and longitude and latitude. It was very nice to meet all of the fourth graders and for all of the students to get to know the teachers a little. We reviewed regions by decorating a giant cookie shaped like Texas. We used icing with food coloring to represent the four major regions. Twizzlers represented rivers. Gumdrops were mountains, Red Hots were cities, and Skittles were resources and products. We used maps in the textbook as a resource. I will be posting photos of the cookies on our blog. Check them out! We will be having a test on Texas Regions, Map Skills, and Native Americans on Tuesday.
We had a fun and educational science assembly on Thursday! A scientist from Mad Science came and taught us about sound waves and sound. Ask your child about some of the demonstrations that she did for us.
We took our first fourth grade benchmark. It was a writing benchmark and we spent a lot of the day on Wednesday writing our compositions. The children did a wonderful job showing skills and techniques that they've learned this year. This benchmark helps us to practice the testing format of the writing TAKS test that the students will be taking in the beginning of March.
Be sure to practice math facts with your child everyday, if possible. Basic addition and subtraction should be automatic for them. Most of the multiplication facts from 0x 0 to 12X 12 should be almost automatic. Thank you for working on this with your child.
Conferences are taking place this week afterschool and next week. If you still need a conference time, let me know. Your child should come with you to our conference so that they can talk about their goals and progress so far.
Remember:
Forest Creek Service Club-meeting afterschool on Monday until 3:45.
OLSAT testing on Monday, October 4.
Social Studies test on Tuesday, October 5.
Oct.5 SEPAC Monthly Parent Coffee & PTA Meeting in the library @ 6:30 pm
Oct. 6 1st Walk to School Wednesday,
TAKS Accountability Review Meeting in the library @ 4:00 pm
Oct. 7 Pre K, Kinder, 1st, 3rd, and 5th Vision and Hearing Screening
Parenting with Love and Logic Brown Bag Lunch Book Club
Oct. 8 Pre K, Kinder, 1st, 3rd, and 5th Vision and Hearing Screening
Oct. 11 No School (Columbus Day)--Parent Teacher Conferences
Oct. 11- 15 Book Fair in the library
Oct. 29 Harvest Fest from 5-8 pm
Nov. 6 2010 Parent Summit 9 am - 4 pm at McNeil HS
Have a wonderul week! Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
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