Hard to Believe that it is the Last Week of 4th Grade!

Hi, It is hard to believe that we are already in our last week of 4th grade! I have had a extraordinary time with your children this year. I am excited to have more time for my family and reading, but am very sad about not seeing your children everyday. I am proud of the progress that your children have made this year! We will continue to work this week but do have several fun things planned as well. On Monday we will be gluing the bones that we found inside our owl pellets to black paper. The kids have found lots of bones from the rodents that the owl ate and have separated the bones from the fur. Using a bone chart, they have tried to identify the bones and label them. This activity compliments our reading of There's an Owl in the Shower. We will be finishing reading this book on Monday also. We researched the Northern Spotted Owls a bit and also wrote poems about owls as well as Character Cinquain poems about one of the characters in the book. We have discussed the impact that cutting in the old growth forests had on the owls and other animals that used that ecosystem as their habitats. It has been interesting to learn how most of earth's creatures are interdependent. On Tuesday our pen pals will be coming for our last visit of the school year. We have had a wonderful time learning about the past through the stories told to us by our pen pals. Writing letters to them gives us an authentic reason to write as did writing about them in our class pen pal book. Each child wrote a page about their pen pal and decorated a page of photos. Some children wrote a poem about his/her pen pal, some wrote an essay, and some wrote an expository piece with subtitles. The pen pals will be at FCE at about 10:30 am. We would love to have you come and join us. YOU ARE INVITED! On Wednesday, we will be having an Author's Celebration! We will celebrate the amazing writing that the children have completed this year by sharing our published books with you. Come to our room at 2:00. Each child will share the title and cover of his/her book with the entire group. Then we will break into smaller groups to read individual books. It will be a lot of fun and I know that the children are excited to share their books. Hope you can join us at 2:00 on Wednesday! On Thursday, we will be having fun with meal worms. We will conduct some experiments with the meal worms and take data on the results. We will learn about the life cycle of the meal worm and do some research on them. The meal worms will not complete their life cycle during this last week of school so the children are invited to take home a meal worm and then report back on our MOODLE page about the progress of their meal worm. If you do not want your child to bring a meal worm home, please let me know. On Friday, we will have a signing party with the entire fourth grade using our yearbooks or autograph books. We will also have our end of the year party. You will be getting an email on Monday afternoon asking for donations for our party. Our party will be in our classroom at 2:00 pm. Thank you in advance for helping to add to our fun! Check your Child's Back Pack Your child will be bringing home some workbooks. There will be a huge math book which we did use a lot throughout the year, a smaller blue reading/writing book which we did use a lot for multiple choice practice, and a white language book which we used a little bit. Be sure to use these books for practice over the summer so that your child keeps his/her skills strong for fifth grade. The students will also be bringing home their writer's notebook, reader's response notebook, word study spiral, math spiral, science notebook, and two social studies spirals. Look through these books with your child and celebrate all of their hard work this year. You may want to save a few of these. I love looking back at Blair's writing and other work from 4th grade and younger. It is fun for them to see what they found important and what their writing was like when they were young. Enjoy! Send in Erasers, Pencils, Food, and Books to Help Others Our school is collecting erasers and pencils for an orphanage in Honduras. A friend of mine organizes trips to Honduras to help children in an orphanage as well as homeless there. The group is going again in June and I asked her how we can help. She told me of how the children all shared one tiny eraser. Our class talked about how much they like having erasers and sharp pencils and how they tend to take them for granted. We already collected a lot of erasers and hope to collect a bunch more to help out these children. There is a box outside the office for the donations. Our FCE Service Club has been collecting food for the Round Rock Serving Center as well as books for the clients to use in the waiting area and take home with them. Our Service Club also worked on a public service announcement about reasons why people would use the services of the RR Serving Center and we will be finishing up the editing of our movie this week. Thank you again for donating books and food this year. We will continue to accept donations this week. Thank you again for a fantastic year. I hope to see you this week to be able to thank you in person. Be sure that your child is reading a lot this summer. Take part in a reading program at the public library or Barnes and Noble or one of the other cool programs. I would love to get emails or letters about books that they enjoyed. Practice math facts and math concepts online with First in Math as well as other sites on our class web page or any FCE teacher web page for lots of learning and fun. Write a lot also. Your child will be bringing home a stamped envelope with my address on it. They should write me a letter this summer and I will write them back. Then we can be pen pals! The children can also continue writing to their pen pal from The Court. Have a safe and wonderful summer full of fun! See you in 5th grade!!!!!!! Sincerely, Pam Bartholomew