Bartholomew Bats!


Our school is located in Round Rock, Texas which is near Austin. Austin and Round Rock both have huge populations of Mexican Free Tailed Bats that live under our bridges. A colony of bats lives beneath the Ann Richards/Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin and in Round Rock, another colony resides under the Interstate 35 bridge over McNeil Road. Each evening from March to about October, the bats fly out from beneath the bridge and search for insects to eat. The emergence of the bats is a wonder to watch. We are also thankful that all these millions of bats eat the bugs by our homes.

Our class mascot is the Bat to honor the mammals that live so close to us and help us. (also because Bat and Bartholomew both start with the letter B!) The bats in Central Texas live together in a group and help take care of the young. Then they migrate together as a team. Our class will also live together in our classroom, work together as a team, and help each other out. We are the Bartholomew Bats!





Thursday, August 25, 2016

Great First Week!

Dear Families,

Our first week of 4th grade has been wonderful! Your children are working hard and doing well. I am impressed with the excitement for reading and writing so far and I know this will continue and increase as the year progresses!

Every Friday is Spirit Day! Your child should wear green, purple, or an FCE shirt to show his/her school pride! Monday is College Shirt Day. Hook 'em!

We will have our Back to School Night next Thursday from 6-6:30 in the classroom and at 6:30, Mrs. Lehnick will go over some school wide information in the cafeteria. We hope to see you there.

Your child brought his/her Thursday folder home today. Inside is a letter about joining our Class Dojo group. We are using this to track individual and class positive behavior. You can receive notifications about your student's progress and also view our class story which will have photos about classroom activities. I am still learning the specifics of this program, but Mrs. Moellenberg used it the last two years with her classes and really liked it. We will have classroom rewards like shoes off and lunch in the classroom that can be earned with points. Let me know what you think.

This week in:

Reading-The students set up the expectations for our Reading Workshop, wrote on their reading logs, and read independently for 20 minutes each day this week. The children talked with a friend about their reading and several students had individual conferences with me. They also decorated our book boxes and chose books from our classroom library. Our class library check out day is Friday. We will go tomorrow for an orientation and will get some books.

Grammar-We played active games and watched Schoolhouse Rock videos about nouns and verbs. We will continue to play games to practice complete sentences and parts of speech.

Writing-The students created self portraits included some writing about a few of their inner characteristics and some of their favorite things. They also wrote a letter to me introducing themselves. I loved reading and responding to them. We read some poetry books and began practicing the writing process by writing a poem about themselves. They brainstormed, wrote rough drafts, and are in the process of revising, editing, and publishing. The kids are excited to share their poems with you on Back to School Night. Next week, we will begin working on personal narrative writing.

Social Studies-We brainstormed things that we knew about Texas and colored a Texas map according to the regions. We began sharing information about our Texas photos. We will continue to share our photos tomorrow and write about them. We will go on a virtual bus tour of the regions next week.

Homework will be sent home on Monday. Your child should be reading everyday for at least 20-30 minutes and should record the reading on the book log that will be in the homework folders on Monday. There will also be a packet that will be typically given on Friday and due the next Friday. The math and grammar papers has a daily assignment that will be graded the next morning. There will be some additional assignments (reading response letters, spelling words, vocabulary words, etc..) that will come in later weeks.

Thank you for sharing your child with me. Let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Sincerely,
Pam

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