The Fund Run on Friday was a huge success! Our class had a great time running and it was a beautiful day. Thank you for your donations!
Fluency and Rocket Math begin this week. Each Monday your child will bring home a reading passage to practice reading aloud with good expression. Please encourage quality reading, not just fast reading. This paper should stay in their BEE folder so that we can practice at school and at home. On Friday you can take it out of their BEE folder. Rocket Math practice sheets will come home nightly. The practice sheet includes 40 math facts your child should complete. They do not need to be timed, but it shouldn't take them more than 2-5 minutes to complete. They turn this in each morning as they enter the room. Practicing math facts early in the year will make the longer math equations studied in 4th grade much less painful. Multiplication facts should be memorized and 4th graders should be advancing to division soon. Bitey, our class snake, is hungry! I'd like to feed him this week and the class is eager to watch. If you have any questions about feeding the snake please email me. The class is studying energy in science. To demonstrate solar energy, we'll be building solar cookers next week to cook smores! If you'd like to make a donation to this project, we need: empty pizza boxes, marshmallows, chocolate bars, graham crackers. Thank you in advance for any donations to this fun and delicious science experiment. Word Study: We're well on our way with studying words. Each week your child will sort by sound, pattern, meaning, or a combination of all 3. Monday: Students receive their word study lists and will complete an OPEN sort. Tuesday: Students learn a pattern that their list follows and will sort their word study words accordingly in a CLOSED sort Wednesday: Students complete another CLOSED sort or a BLIND sort or a SPEED sort Thursday: Students will review their pattern and play a game or complete an activity that reinforces using the spelling pattern. Students take home their word study binders to practice sorting. Friday: Students take their word study test. Writing: Students are writing scenes this week that follow the story maps they created last week. Students are working hard to develop character, setting and plot details by weaving together action, dialogue, thoughts and feelings. Their realistic fiction story ideas are really impressive so far. Ask your child about what their story is all about! Math: We are wrapping up the first unit in math. Study guides were sent home Monday and are due Wednesday. We will check the study guide Wednesday, and your child will bring it home Wednesday night. Their unit test will be Thursday. Homework: Study guide due Wednesday, study for test on Thursday Reading: We are wrapping up our first unit in reading which was all about developing quality reading habits. Students have been working hard to choose just right books for them and their reading stamina has grown tremendously. This week our focus is on sharing books we love with others. At home you could talk about some of your favorite books as a family or share with your child times where you and a friend have shared books that you liked. Science: We are beginning our unit on energy. The first form of energy we're studying is heat energy. Students will learn ways that heat energy is transferred and how insulators work. Next week we'll build solar cookers as we transition into other forms of energy Social Studies: Students have been studying how ideas become laws. They will learn more this week about the structure of our government at the local, state and national levels.
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We are really in the swing of things here in room 302!
Fund Run is this Friday! Our Fund Run class color is GREEN! Mrs. Rush volunteered to get hair color spray. She will spray hair Friday morning before we go run so we look especially spirited! If you do NOT want your child's hair to be sprayed please email me before Friday. 4th grade will be running 10:40-11:05 out in the bus loop! Today your child is bringing home two permission slips. The first is for our field trip to Lansing! The top portion is for your child to come on the field trip and the bottom half is for you to fill out if you are interested in chaperoning. You must have an ICHAT form on file at school in order to chaperone. The second permission slip you'll see today is for permission to publish your child's work and/or image on our classroom website. Both permission slips are due back to me next Monday, September 29. Today your child is also bringing home our first Scholastic book order of the year. To order online you'll need our class code which is GXPRM. Orders are also due Monday, September 29. Thank you for those who volunteered to volunteer in our classroom! I am putting together a schedule and will contact volunteers this week to confirm times. Thanks again, the class appreciates your time! :) Word Study - We'll begin this week.. for real this time. Last week unexpected events came up during our word study time and in order to effectively establish word study routines I thought we'd better postpone a week. This week students will be working with the words they brought home last Monday. The word study test will be Friday. Writing - Students have thought up realistic fiction story ideas and are working to develop their characters with external and internal traits. They'll continue to plan out their story to unfold in a realistic way by creating a story-map. Math - We are wrapping up our first unit in Math by studying how addition and subtraction are related and how we can use those inverse operations to check our work. They will apply addition and subtraction to word problems. Our first unit test will be next week. A study guide will come home Monday (probably) and we will review in school as well. This week, your child will have homework (a one sided worksheet) Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. Reading - The class has built up their reading stamina at school, so now we're focusing on monitoring meaning as they read. Students will learn to notice when something doesn't make sense, what kinds of situations that may occur, and will learn strategies to help them get back on track when they realize something doesn't make sense. Science - We're continuing our study of the scientific method by seeing other places the scientific method occurs and how we can hypothesize about any situation, not just during Science class. Social Studies - We're continuing our study of the government. Last week students learned that we vote for people to represent us. This week they'll learn what those representatives do in congress and how laws get passed from branch to branch. THANK YOU to everyone who came to curriculum night. If you did not come to curriculum night you received an email from me on Friday with directions how to sign up for your conference. If you have not done so, please sign up for your conference here http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0d4ea9af2fa5fa7-fall Last week we started book buddies! Each week we will partner up with Ms. Pelletier's kindergarteners to read to them or work on projects with them. Monday folders are coming home today for the first time. Monday folders will hold your child's finished work. You will either see a score at the top, which means they received a grade for that assignment or you will see a sticker or a star or smiley face at the top which means they received credit for turning it in, but it was not added to your child's report card grade. This week you will see several no grade assignments as we've had several getting to know each other activities as well as activities to help establish routines in the classroom. You'll not see any this week, but if you see CT at the top of your child's paper it means the work was "checked together" or "completed together" this means your child checked their own paper or completed the paper as a class. Please review your child's work, initial the blue page inside and return the folder to school tomorrow. Congratulations to our new student council representatives, Carter and Camille! The Fund run is coming up September 26th! I told the class if they filled our bucket buddy with change then I would dump a bucket of ice water on my head, just like the ice bucket challenge that was going around this past summer. 4th grade will be running 10:40-11:05 and we'll probably stay a little after to cool down and to watch the 5th graders begin their run. Word Study - Students began word study today! They were directed to leave one list at school and to bring one list home. Check to see if the list made it home. We'll be studying word patterns all week with a test on Friday. I'll direct students to take home their word study binders Thursday evening so they can review the ways we sorted words that week. Writing - This week students will begin gathering ideas for a realistic fiction story they'll be writing. They will start with developing a character and then will give that character a problem they'll need to overcome over the course of the story. Math - Using bigger numbers, students learned different ways to add while regrouping. Students will learn other strategies throughout the week such as rounding or using mental math and recognizing when each strategy is appropriate to use. We'll wrap up the week with subtracting larger numbers and how to regroup when subtracting. There will be math homework Tuesday this week. Reading - We're still practicing some reading workshop routines while students get into their first few book choices of the year. Students set reading goals for themselves today and we'll work with those goals throughout the year. We're working on building up reading stamina. Our class can read 20 minutes without interruption so far this year. We're working to build up that uninterrupted reading time. Science - Students will apply the scientific method to a variety of situations. Today we went on a nature walk and students made observations about what's happening in nature and developed hypotheses about those observations. We will be doing the boat experiment tomorrow, so if your child did not bring in their boat today they have a one day extension on that due date. Social Studies - We'll continue our study of government and how laws develop. Students will be writing a letter to one of our legislators about an issue they care about. We had a fantastic first week of fourth grade last week. We've been focusing on classroom routines and procedures this first week. The class was especially excited to pick classroom jobs and meet our class pet, Bitey, the corn snake. We've also spent a lot of time getting to know each other and building our classroom community. Thank you to everyone who turned in the information packet on time. It is due today! Curriculum Night is this Thursday night! K-2nd grade teachers will present 5:00-5:45, K-5th grade teachers will present 6:00-6:45 and 3-5th grade teachers will present 7:00-7:45. Hopefully this time scheduling will help if you have multiple children attending Paint Creek. I'll see you there! It's Fund Run season! The class will attend the opening assembly for this year's Fund Run and they will bring home information in their BEE folder (Bring Everything Every day) Picture day is Monday, September 15. Picture day order forms are also coming home today in your child's BEE folder. Please hang on to your order and have your child bring it to school September 15th. Word Study - We will begin word lists next week. Students took the spelling inventory last week which shows what spelling patterns they know and which spelling patterns they still need to learn. Writing - Students started using their writer's notebooks last week by collecting some story ideas. I had them begin a story for 5 minutes and they (almost unanimously) begged for 5 more minutes to write! This week students will review the features of narrative and opinion writing types and will complete an On-Demand writing prompt which gives me information about who they are as a writer. Math - We've begun Unit 1 in math which covers place value, addition and subtraction. This week students will be focusing on place value with numbers up to the millions place as well as rounding to different place values and comparing numbers. There will be math homework today and Wednesday this week. Reading - Students are eager to begin Reading Workshop. This week I'll introduce the class to our classroom library and reading workshop routines that we'll live by this year. Students will learn about shopping for books, book nooks, warm up and cool down time, and using their reading notebooks. We will begin to practice those routines near the end of the week. Students should be reading at home about 5-6 times a week. Science - We'll begin our science studies this year with reviewing the scientific method and going through the scientific method in various circumstances. Social Studies - Our first unit in Social Studies is government. We will begin by learning about why we have a government. Good evening! The class and I had an excellent first half day of school today! I thought I'd share our specials schedule so that you have a better idea what your child may need for school each day. More information will be presented on Curriculum Night, Thursday, September 11.
Each day our class has a special 8:55-9:45. Monday - Media Tuesday - PE Wednesday - Music Thursday - Art Every other Friday is PE. This Friday the class does not have PE, so next week they will! I hope to see you at Curriculum Night! Mrs. Kaump |
AuthorCindy Kaump Archives
June 2017
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