4C News: Week of September 17th

Constitution Day

September 17th, 2018

Constitution Day commemorates the formation and signing of the U.S. Constitution by thirty-nine brave men on September 17th, 1787, recognizing all who are born in the U.S.

Picture Day: Picture Day is right around the corner! Your 4th grader will have their picture taken on September, 24.

Project Lit information meeting is Tuesday, September 18th at 4:45. The meeting will take place at Bellerive Elementary in the Library.

Bellerive Library 620 Rue de Fleur Creve Coeur, MO 63141

**If you have any questions feel free to contact Mrs. Childes achildes@parkwayschools.net or Mrs. Biehl mbiehl@parkwayschools.net

If your are interest in this book club and are not able to attend, please let me know and I can send you all the information. 

Reading: This week we are moving into the last part of bend 2 and starting bend 3 of our unit on interpreting characters. We will spend time forming theories about characters in order to defend our thinking. Bend three students will be devoted to the process of building interpretations They will see how their ideas about characters connect with insights about other elements of the story, such as the setting or objects that seem to be significant.

Writing: This week will be the end of our unit on writing realistic fiction stories. If students still need to put some finishing touches on their writing pieces before Thursday, they may work on it at home. I have planned various writing stations students will move through to closely look at and read their writing pieces.

Math: We will have our first math test on Tuesday, September 18. Students should be spending time last week and this week studying for this test. They all have been given a review guide for the type of problem they need to know how to do. On Wednesday, we will complete the unit reflection and set goals for the upcoming unit.

Science: This week we are moving on to lesson 6. This lesson focuses on how do natural Earth processes result in hazards that affect humans. Students will use interactive maps to show patterns of Earth processes such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and floods.

Vocabulary: earthquake, volcano

Social Studies: The week we will finish lesson 2 on later Native Americans of Missouri. Last week we read this lesson and this will we will be diving deeper into analyzing the information in this lesson. This means we will compare and contrast the Osage and Sac and Fox tribes and identify the Missouri and Osage's community, their hunting and farming, family groups, and trading fur. This will be done in the student's social studies packet.

Vocabulary: lodges, teepee, clan

Have a wonderful week! :)

4C News week of September 10th

Hope everyone has had a nice relaxing weekend. Every Sunday/Monday I will be posting here about our upcoming week. This will not be like our formal newsletters but will outline any important information and what we are learning.

 

September 11th: September 11, 2011 had a profound impact on the United States and the rest of the world. Each year, I reflect on the events that occurred on that clear September day. September 11th taught me about empathy and compassion. I will never forget the lessons I learned that day. On Tuesday, I am going to share pieces of my story with your 4th graders and let them in on a little bit of history that had a lasting impact on all of our hearts. We will be making a collaborative poster in class in honor of September 11th.

All Read: All Read is happening this Thursday at 3:25.

Conference Sign Ups: Highcroft's Fall Conference Night is October 4th, from 4:30-8:00 pm.  We utilize an online system to schedule conference meetings. This system, called MyConferenceTime, will allow you to schedule your conference with your student’s teacher without having to send in paper forms.

You will be able to schedule your conference beginning September 13th at 8:00 am.  There are a few easy steps to register for your conference. If you have one child at Highcroft Ridge:

1. Go to www.myconferencetime.com/highcroftridge
2. Click your child’s teacher from the list of teachers.
3. Choose your preferred conference time from the list of available conferences and click “Sign Up” under your preferred time.
4. Fill in all required information and any necessary optional information and click “Sign Up for Your Conference.” Please be assured that all information is submitted securely and will only be used by the school for confirmation purposes.  It will not be available to outside sources.
5. You will receive a confirmation email confirming your conference time.

If you have multiple students at Highcroft please click “Register for Multiple Conferences,” then follow the steps to enter the information for each child. You will then be presented the schedules for multiple teachers to compare.

Again, the website will open at 8:00 a.m. on Thursday, September 13.  Please be aware that this system is set up in a way that everyone will have the same priority in scheduling.  If you have a need for a specific time, it will be important that you schedule as soon as possible once the window opens to ensure availability of conference times.

If you do not have access to a computer or have difficulty scheduling, please contact Sherry Heyse at sheyse@parkwayschools.net or call at 314-415-6406.

September
  12: Parkway Board of Education Meeting, 7:00 pm, Central Middle
  13: All Read, 3:25 pm
  20: PAMEE Meeting, 6:00 pm, ISC
  24: Picture Day
  26: Late Start, School begins at 11:05 am
  27: Jog Jam
        PSO Meeting, 7:00 pm in the Library 

Reading: This week we will continue to grow ideas about our characters in the book we are reading as a class and independently. Students will also develop theories about their character and participate in a debate to defend those theories.

We will also be Skyping with Ben Guterson the author of Winterhouse. He reached out to me this summer asking if my class would like a Skype visit. I contacted him last year for an advance copy of Winterhouse and he was happy to send it to me and my fifth graders last year. Book 2 in the Winterhouse Trilogy will be out in December. Our Skype visit will take place on Thursday @ 1:40.

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Winterhouse Summary: Orphan Elizabeth Somers’s malevolent aunt and uncle ship her off to the ominous Winterhouse Hotel, owned by the peculiar Norbridge Falls. Upon arrival, Elizabeth quickly discovers that Winterhouse has many charms―most notably its massive library. It’s not long before she locates a magical book of puzzles that will unlock a mystery involving Norbridge and his sinister family. But the deeper she delves into the hotel’s secrets, the more Elizabeth starts to realize that she is somehow connected to Winterhouse. As fate would have it, Elizabeth is the only person who can break the hotel’s curse and solve the mystery. But will it be at the cost of losing the people she has come to care for, and even Winterhouse itself?

Writing: We are in the process of finishing our realistic fiction stories. You can find your child's story in Google Classroom. Students will spend time this week revising and editing their story during our editing stations.

Social Studies: We will be finishing lesson one The First Missourians and starting lesson two Native Americans of Missouri. This will include reviewing the vocabulary, compare and contract the Native American groups in Missouri and answering review questions.

Vocabulary: archeology, prehistory, mound, surplus, teepee, lodge, clan

Science: This week we will be moving on to lesson five of our MySci unit Our Dynamic Earth. This lesson focuses on how does weathering and erosion affect Earth's landforms. Students will be using patterns of changes in Earth's features to investigate plate motions. We will be making observations and using measurements to observe weathering, wind, water, and glacial erosion.

Vocabulary: erosion, soil, glacier, weathering

Math: We have come to the end of our unit on place value and adding and subtracting whole numbers. This week (Tuesday) will students will come home with a review packet. The review packet will take the place of Math homework for the week. We will spend the week in class reviewing topic 1: place value and topic 2: adding and subtracting whole numbers. Notes and teachings can be found in your child's math notebook and their textbook. I will encourage them to bring them home to study each night. Our test will be September 18th.

September Newsletter

A Look into 4th Grade

We are off to an awesome start in 4th grade! Remember to check Dojo
for daily updates, pictures, and homework.  Here is a look at what we
are working on and what is coming next.

Reading:

We are working on our first unit, which is Interpreting Characters.
Our focus over the next few weeks will be establishing a reading life,
thinking deeply about characters, and building interpretations. We
are reading every day during independent reading time where we
confer with your kids about their current books and their goals.  
Please remind your students to be reading each night at home. We
ask for at least 30 minutes.

Writing:

We are working on our first unit, which is Writing Realistic Fiction.
Our focus over the next few weeks will be creating and developing
stories and characters that feel real, drafting and revising with an eye
toward believability, preparing for publication with an audience in

mind, and embarking on independent fiction projects.  Students are
writing independently every day while teachers are conferring with
your kids. You can check their story on our Google classroom.

Science:

Our first unit is Our Dynamic Earth. Throughout this unit, students
will build an appreciation of the Earth as a dynamic system that is
constantly being shaped by wind, water, ice, vegetation, plate movements,
earthquakes, volcanoes, and humans.

Social Studies:

We have started our first unit on the early settlement of Missouri and
exploration.  We will focus on prehistory and the Northwest Passage,
Thomas Jefferson and the Louisiana Purchase, and the Corps of Discovery
with Lewis and Clark.

Math:

We have begun our first unit on addition, subtraction, and place value.  
Your students will generalize their understanding of place value by
recognizing relationships among places, the value of each individual
digit, and values within the whole number. Your student will also
apply place value understanding to expanded notation, and the rounding
of numbers. They will become fluent with the U.S. algorithms for addition
and subtraction, and learn to select the most appropriate addition or
subtraction strategy for the numbers in a given problem.