Manning's Message

Happy New Year!  Welcome Back Everyone!

I hope you all had a restful and enjoyable vacation.  We have jumped right back into learning and improving.  We are revisiting our learning and behavioral expectations as we begin the next phase of fourth grade.  I’m calling it “Back to School Boot Camp.”  The students are making a new behavioral goal for Trimester Two, and will post this goal on their desk.  We will reflect each day on our goal.  Also, the students are making an academic goal and a general goal.  This goal sheet will come home for a signature when they are completed later this week.

Winter Celebration

On the Friday before vacation, we had our winter celebration.

The students decorated foam gingerbread men using beads, pipe cleaners, yarn, and other glittery items.  I know the students had a wonderful time and their characters were beautiful creations!    Students also participated in All School Meeting, which was a rousing, joyous time for all as we sang many songs from a variety of cultures.  

Language Arts

Many students are working to complete their “Gingerbread” stories and we look forward to sharing these picture books.  During reading this week, the students are participating in “Daily Five Boot Camp.”  We will review the purpose for each D5 activity and the expectations for these activities.  Each day the students will work to build their stamina for one D5 activity: Reading to Self, Working on Writing, and Reading to Someone, Listen to Reading, and Work on Writing.  We are also introducing Word Work this week. Later in the week, we will get back to choosing three activities per day. 

Mathematics

This week students are practicing how to find fractions of a set and to multiply a fraction by a whole number.  We will also focus on solving real-world problems involving fractions. Next week we will  practice making line plots and learn how to make line plots which include fractional data points. After a review, we will be ready to take our fraction assessment next week.

Students should continue to practice their multiplication and division facts.  Trimester Two requires students to know these facts through 12 x 12.

Social Studies

We are beginning our study of the Southern Region of our country.  We begin by learning about the South’s land and climate.  Students will need to know the states in both the upper and lower south. Students are required to know the location of each state on a map, and know each state and its capital.  Students will take their first quiz on the map of the South this Thursday.  They will need to locate the upper and lower states on the map.  Students will also be continuing their study of Map skills this trimester by practicing locating various places using latitude and longitude and using a scale to measure the distance between places.  

Science

We have begun our Energy unit. Students have been introduced to the concept of energy and know that “Energy “is the ability to do work, “Work “is moving an object from one place to another and “Speed” is a  way of measuring how quickly something is moving or being done.  In their first experiment, students made race cars to demonstrate how stored energy (potential) can be converted into energy of motion (kinetic). Check out the pictures posted on Seesaw.  This week students will continue to learn about how energy can be stored when they conduct an experiment entitled “What makes a roller coaster go so fast?”