Weekly Review

It seemed like a crazy short week - in large part due to the Snow Day on Monday, I think.  Amoung the week's highlights was the Winter Concert put on by the third and fourth grade chorus led by Ms. Trasciatti-Holmberg.  We attended the concert on Wednesday afternoon.  As you may know, it was also held on Wednesday evening.  I was struck by the varied repertoire, the precision of pitch and of enunciation.  The singers looked so joyful!  It was thrilling to see and hear the performance.

We are honing in on our blog posts a bit, as I mentioned last week.  Students did some revisions on old posts and posted them.  This isn't exactly how blogging works-posting old news-but I'm hoping we can raise the standards for grammar, usage and mechanics even for unchecked work!  Please encourage your children by reading their posts, noting when there is no new post and generally inquiring about their school lives with specific questions.  Hopefully this blog gives you some starting points.

In other writing news we did some work with pronouns and plurals in our Daily Language Review and we took further steps in persuasive writing.  We are looking at organization and author's craft in particular.  Students are working on a persuasive essay about a favorite candy, game, book or TV show.  This is a great way for me to connect with students about what is important to them.  One favorite topic is Minecraft.  It is helpful for me to read what they think about this game and why it is so important to them.

In fourth grade math we are revisiting place value, measurement and computation of multi digit numbers.  The Bridges Math Program does take an innovative approach.  I find that students are able to build a much stronger conceptual understanding through the work we are doing than I have seen with other programs.  In third and fourth grade math both there is a need for more work on basic math fact practice.  We do this at school with our work on the program Xtra Math.  The problem is that it is a skill and drill kind of program that has lost some of its luster lately. It would be great if you could encourage your child to work toward mastery at home with flashcards or by him/her using Xtra Math for 5-10 minutes here or there.  Actually, even just asking him or her where she is in the program would be helpful.

Yesterday we determined the kind party we will have on Friday to celebrate Valentine's Day.  We will be having a card exchange and some special snacks.  Students created a menu and signed up to bring in food items.  They have access to this list in Google Drive so they can show it to you.  The menu is Fruit Rainbow, Class Made Trail Mix, and a few other special snack items.  If you would rather not supply what your child signed up for, that's fine.  I'm sure we will have enough food items. We will build a fruit rainbow and the trail mix together.  Our Stone Soup experience was very successful; we are eager to make and eat food together again! I have put a link to the sign up doc in the upper right hand corner of this blog.  It is not a doc you can edit but you can see what your child signed up for.  Please let me know if you have questions or concerns.

Other things to note:

We had the second of four science workshops this week focusing on the topic of matter.
On Thursday our school mascot, Einstein visited to invigorate our commitment to SMART behaviors.
NAEP testing was rescheduled for Tuesday, February 10.  All fourth graders will participate.