September+26,+2011

Hello Grade 4 Parents! September 26, 2011

Your support shows through by helping your children make sure their homework is getting done. I’m pleased with the student’s progress at responsibility. I have “thrown” a couple of large multiplication and division problems out there just to see who can do it and who needs extra time to develop these skills. At this point in time, it’s okay if they can’t do it. I am just delighted who can already! We will be spending time on these kinds of problems along with many other math skills.


 * // Math: //** We are completing our graphing and mapping unit. Students are starting to realize they have to look closely at the “worded” questions to see what they need to do. Story problems are the biggest challenge for ESL students, so we will practice them often. There are key words to pick out such as “difference, more than, sum,” to help students understand what to do in order to solve the problem. I will be giving a //Math Assessment to the students later this week// to evaluate their understanding of basic math skills. This will help me narrow in on specific skills where students need extra help. Our //next unit will be geometry// and everyone needs to have rulers and compasses handy in class.


 * // Language Arts: //** Students have worked on simple sentences, compound sentences with the “fanboys,” which are coordinating conjunctions, and now complex sentences with subordinating conjunctions. Commas become trickier for these kinds of sentences, so we have been working on them also. In the future when students write paragraphs, I will be looking for a mix of these three kinds of sentences which will make their writing more interesting.


 * // Unit of Inquiry: //** Learning how to research has been a struggle for some students. It’s not always easy and some of the students have changed their minds regarding their country or the violation of right that they picked to study. This is fine until now. During this week, there will be no more research time at school and they will be spending the time writing three paragraphs and typing them up.

Our school uses Open Office on the Media Center computers. This program does a lot of weird things to the student’s writings and often takes a lot of time to “undo” what it does, so I’ve asked students to get an email to use which will allow us to use //Google documents//. This document is very much like //Word// and is much easier for students to use. **//They cannot sign up for Google docs, however, unless they have an email.//** This “shared group” document only allows our group of students to see the work and no one else on the internet can view or change their work. This is also where I can edit their work without taking 13 memory sticks home to do it. All my students last year had an email which allowed me to correspond, send websites to look into at home and send pictures to keep. When students take their memory stick home with them, they often do not come back the next day. We will be practicing researching often throughout the year, so they will always need to keep their memory stick at school.


 * // Art: //** Students are beginning a drawing for expressing their violation of right. Their homework for this last weekend was to come up with ideas of how to express it in a drawing.


 * // Music: //** Students are listening to a symphony and learning to play it by ear and read the music that Mr. Radek puts on the board. Please ask them what song they are learning to play.

I am still trying to set up a field trip for the students, but have not been able to set up details with the person yet. I will let you know when this occurs.

I appreciate any students that have called me during “non-school” times to ask questions and clarify what they should be doing. I don’t mind because it makes it easier when they come back to school already understanding.

Hope you have a great week, and thank you for your support! Ms. Nancy Marcet