Newsletter

Hi,

We had a busy but fun week. We finished up our published class book about our pen pals and it looks wonderful. The children did a great job writing important poems about their pen pals and decorating a page with a photo. We had a contest for the cover of the book. There were many beautiful entries and the kids voted for their favorite. Haylea's drawing was picked for the cover and Alexa's drawing will be our title page. I can't wait to see the books after publication!I know that our pen pals are going to love them.

Reading:

In reading we learned some more about poetry and looking for characteristics of free verse or lyrical poems in the poems read. We read traditional literature and created huge charts to understand literary elements in myths, fairy tales, tall tales, legends, and fables. We also read an article about polar bears and made a facts/questions/response chart to help guide our understanding of non-fiction text. Today we read an awesome book about Mt. Everest called Top of the World. We read with a question in mind and used the subheadings to let us know where to find some answers. We learned a lot about the dangers of climbing the tallest point on the earth. Next week we will learn about drama and the differences in punctuation in dialogue in drama and narratives. We will also act out some plays and/or reader's theaters.

Writing:

We have been generating story ideas and writing drafts for our second published piece. We've written about turning points in our lives (first times/last times doing something that used to be hard but isn't anymore, first/last times with a person, animal, or at a place, times when our lives almost changed or did change, and times when we realized something important about ourselves.) We also wrote entries about strong feelings. Using a story arc (events in story that lead up to a climax and then down to a resolution)with stories that we've read helped us to understand the structure of a good story. Today we looked at our first published pieces. We reread them and then determined elements of the piece in which we did well and areas to work on or next steps. Then we read some of our friend's pieces and gave them feedback. Later we looked at all of our entries in our writer's notebooks and chose a few that had good potential. We shared them with a friend and decided on an idea for our next published piece. We wrote a story arc of that idea to help us plan. Next week we will begin writing these pieces. I am very excited!

Math:

Math has been busy with multiplication strategies for larger numbers. We used big arrays broken into smaller arrays as a strategy to solve multiplication with larger numbers. I was so impressed with the variety and quality of strategies that many of your children use when problem solving. I was amazed at how well they could manipulate numbers. We will continue with multiplication and begin division next week.

Science:

We have continued to explore mixtures and solutions. We made a solution of salt and water and tried to boil some salt water to watch the salt evaporate but we ran out of time. The next day, we saw a lot of the salt separate from the water in the pan and on the spoon. We pretended to have a beach in our beakers. We looked at this mixture and separated items using tools. Our beach included sand, water, small rocks, and shells. We used coffee filters, our hands, and tweezers to separate the mixture. We also used a magnet to separate a mixture of beans and metal brackets, watched the ingredients separate in salad dressing and made a solution of Crystal Light powder and water to see the powder dissolve. We will finish up with mixtures and solutions on Monday and begin learning about energy.

Pen Pals:

Our pen pals will be visiting our school on Friday, November 12. We will be doing some Thanksgiving Day activities with them. The children will start planning the specifics on Monday. We would love to have you join us!

Dates to remember:

Nov. 1 -Nov. 12 Round Rock Area Serving Center Annual Food Drive

Nov. 9 TAG Parent Information Night @ 5 pm in the library-If you have any questions about TAG, let me know.

Nov. 9 Food Tasting session by Food Services from 5 - 6 pm
Nov. 9 PTA Meeting @ 6:30 pm in the library
Nov. 9 Senior Choir Concert @ 7:00 pm

Nov. 10 Early Dismissal @ 12:45

Nov. 15 TAG Referral window opens
Nov. 16 PTA Reflections Gallery Night
Nov. 17 Picture Retakes
Nov. 18 Thanksgiving Meal
Nov. 19 Boogie-O-Rama (Fourth Graders perform at 10:05 am)

Dec. 3 Deadline for turning in TAG referrals

Thank you for sharing your child with me. If you have any questions or concerns, let me know!

Sincerely,
Pam Bartholomew