April+11,+2012

April 11, 2012

Dear Parents, Welcome back after a very nice Easter Holiday!

Students have enjoyed a number of water experiments helping them see how important water is to us, our community, and the world. We will have one more experiment next week about how oil spills affect wildlife. Our Unit of Inquiry is about sharing our water resources so students will research how water has been polluted and what it means to us as citizens of the world. Please check the Unit of Inquiry wiki page Unit 5.

Now that we completed Unit 7 in math, we will begin Unit 8 this week. Some of you are concerned about the student's understanding of fractions, so I want you to know we will be continuing to use these skills while working on perimeter and area for 2D geometry in Unit 8. The first thing you will see your children do is measure and draw your kitchen layout. Because our book uses feet and inches for this activity, students will bring home a ruler to take the measurements. Students have become used to talking about the standard unit of measurement due to the fact that we use both the standard unit along with the metric system in our class.

The new book we're reading aloud is //The Thief Lord// by Cornelia Funke. It was originally written in German and is about a group of homeless children in Venice helping two new children that have come to Venice on their own. It may very well take the rest of the year to read, but we will watch the movie near the end of school. Cornelia Funke also wrote the famous story/movie //Inkheart.// I once read //The Thief Lord// to a Grade 4 class in Michigan, U.S.A., and then took them to The Detroit Institute of Arts where they actually got to see 500 year old lion statues taken from St. Mark's Square in Venice.

I would like to finish up the Summative Assessment Presentations next Friday (the 20th), but students may have to print at home due to the fact that next week is "Save Paper" week. Please have their poster board (any color) available for them to begin using next Monday (the 17th). You can find these easily at the Empik store in the Rynek or other stationary stores. Let me know if you don't find one to use. I will send out invitations for you to see the presentations, but we may need to practice with other classes first before having a final presentation ready for you to watch. So, it might be the following week before I can invite you in.

I was delighted to talk with most of you about report cards and classroom behavior. I had to "catch" some of you in the lobby, out in the courtyard and even on the streets, but I want you to know how proud I am of our students and the work they do in Grade 4!

Thank you for your continued support, Ms. Nancy Marcet

. Students’ commercials are finally done - both posters and video ones - students were very excited about it and they did a great job, congratulations! Right now we focus on grammar issues – past tense and vocabulary connected with describing the time (past tense vocabulary: yesterday, last week, last month, last year, 2 hours ago, etc.) Past tense is combined with locative – one of Polish cases which let us indicating the place and the time (e.g. //Wrocław - we Wrocławiu // (Wroclaw, in Wroclaw), //Kraków - w Krakowie // (Krakow, in Krakow), //Warszawa - w Warszawie //etc.)
 * Grade 4: Polish **


 * 3rd and 4th Grade Physical Education**

Students have been participating in their Game Inventors unit where they have been working in groups to invent new PE games. During this unit they will be assessed in the Understanding of Content through their group presentations and Behavior through their interactions with classmates. ). If you would like to learn more about this unit and see a few pictures of some of the kids working in groups as well as of their Games posters please go to the link below on the WIS PE wiki page: http://wis-pe.wikispaces.com/3rd+and+4th+Grade