Fund Run is this Friday! Our Fund Run class color is BLUE! I offered to bring in blue hair spray if the 4th graders wanted it. We 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! Thank you for all donations to our bucket so far! Bitey, our class snake, is hungry! Mrs. Kaump would like to stop by 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 will be studying energy in science. To demonstrate solar energy, we'll be building solar cookers next week to cook s'mores! 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: 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 this week. Study guides will be sent home either at the end of this week or early next week. They will be due Tuesday. We will check the study guide Tuesday, and your child will bring it home Tuesday night. Their unit test will be Wednesday. This week, they will have homework today and Wednesday. Remember, Homework is due the next day. This is something we are getting used to from 3rd grade, but your 4th graders ave been doing really well with getting their work in on time! 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. We are currently reading The Tiger Rising by Kate DiCamillo in class. We have started working past just reading words on a page and have moved to making mental movies in our minds. We have even started to feel like we're in our books! It seems to be one of our favorite parts of the day. Science: Today we did our boat experiment using the Scientific Method we've been discussing the past few weeks. Soon 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. Enjoy some pictures from our nature hypothesis walk and our boat experiments!
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THANK YOU to everyone who came to curriculum night. If you did not come to curriculum night you should have received an orange folder that contained everything we went over that night. If you have any questions about the information provided, don't hesitate to ask! We also had parent teacher conference sign-up that night, so if you did not attend, we still need to get you down for a time. Conferences are Friday, Nov 6th, Monday, Nov 9th, and Wednesday, Nov 11th. Times vary, but if you have a general idea of what time and date work for you, please send me an email and I can set you up with a time that works. I will send home a notice again if you have not signed up for a time. Again, my email is [email protected] 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! Fund Run is next Friday, October 2nd! Our Fund Run class color is BLUE! 4th grade will be running 10:40-11:05 out in the bus loop! Today your child is bringing home a permission slip 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 chaperon. It is due back next Monday, September 28th. Last week we started book buddies! Each week we will partner up with Ms. Pelletier's kindergartners to read to them or work on projects with them. Your students have been such great role models as we start this process. 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 will be setting reading goals for themselves this week 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, I will be sending home a sheet of information about an experiment we will be doing in class that they have to build at home. The students will be making their own boats out of any material they want, but it can be no larger than 3" wide by 5" long by 5" tall (the size of an index card). We will then conduct our experiment in class seeing how much weight their boats can hold using the steps of the scientific method. We would like to do this experiment next week on Monday, so please have them returned by then! Social Studies - We'll continue our study of government and how laws develop. We will also spend some time on each branch of government. Enjoy some pictures with our Book Buddies
We had a fantastic first week of fourth grade last week. We've been focusing on classroom routines and procedures the first week and are working on apply them as we move forward. 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. I would like to share a couple of things about myself now that I will be taking over until the end of October. My name is Chelsea Wekwert and I graduated from Central Michigan University in December of 2014 receiving my Bachelor of Science in Education. I did my student teaching here at Paint Creek with Mrs. Jaffe in her 3rd grade class during the 2014-2015 school year, so I've been working with PC for about a year! I've also taught enrichment programs and summer school at PC. In that respect, some of you may already know me from last year and to that fact, I'm very excited to have the chance to work with your child again! After I graduated, I returned to Paint Creek frequently to sub in classrooms throughout the school, including Mrs. Boyer and Mrs. Bronczyck's rooms, so if your student had either of them last year I have already had the pleasure of working with your students before. While I was subbing, I had the opportunity to sub for Mrs. Kaump and take over for her the last couple weeks of the school year when she had her son, Connor. I have now returned as she continues her maternity leave until the end of October. I am very excited to have the opportunity to work with your 4th graders for a part of this 2015-2016 school year. We are going to have a lot of fun! If you ever need to contact me, my email address is [email protected]. Curriculum Night is this Wednesday night! K-2nd grade teachers will present 5:45 - 6:30, 3-5th grade teachers will present 7:00-7:45. Hopefully this time scheduling will help if you have multiple children attending Paint Creek. There will be childcare provided for school age children. 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 21st. Picture day order forms are should already be in your possession. Please hang on to your order and have your child bring it to school September 21st. 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. 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. Last week we 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 this 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. |
AuthorCindy Kaump Archives
June 2017
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