Correction: Picture Day is Thursday!

Correction: Picture Day is Thursday, not Friday

Book Fair, Picture Day, & Reading Night

Book Fair

Our Book Fair was today during our library time. The book fair will be open all week long as well as during Reading Night

 

Picture Day - Friday Thursday

Our picture day is Friday Thursday in the morning. Feel free to practice smiling :-)

Reading Night Thursday 6-8

Reading Night is this Thursday from 6-8. The book fair will be open during this time as well as other reading events. We will be introduced to this year's One Book, One School program. This year's book is going to be a big hint. I'll give everyone a hint: It's about a utensil, but we don't eat with it.

Math Test Friday & More

Math Test Friday

The students have been preparing for our math test this Friday. Today we started our self-assessment and math box assessment. Most didn't finish. That will be going home tomorrow and need to be signed. These are not for a grade, but rather to illuminate areas where we need to improve before the test. Please review them when they come home.

Studying

In addition to the flashcards, here are a few more tools to help study. A majority of this assessment is about understanding, writing, and using data from/for a graph. Here are a few fun interactive games that might help your students while preparing. Please also use your Student Reference Book on www.everydaymathonline.com. There are more games if you click on Math Resources on my blog also.

Bamzooki
This is a fun action pack game about mean, median, mode, and range. Median, mode, and range are large focuses for this assessment.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/ks2/maths/data/mode_median_mean_range/play/

Interpreting Data
This is a simple, but fun game where you have to interpret data.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/teachers/ks2_activities/maths/interpreting_data.shtml

Estimating Game
I enjoy this game a lot; the kids do too. The goal is to quickly estimate the answer to the addition problem (select add 100s). You don't need to be accurate, just make a ballpark estimate.
http://www.mathsisfun.com/numbers/estimation-game.php

Unit 3
Feel free to take a sneak peek at Unit 3 - https://www.wrightgroup.com/download/em/em3mm_g4_u03_family_letters.pdf

Social Studies Test October 30th

The students will be getting a study guide for this shortly.

Reading Olympics

Many students signed up for Reading Olympics which is great! Reading Olympics is a competition that the students train for all year by reading books off of a specific list. Towards the end of the year, we will go to a competition where we will be asked to answer basic questions about these books. It is truly a fun and special time that is more rewarding the more effort you put into it. There should have been a green paper that went home recently about this. Please contact me if you didn't receive this. You need to sign up to participate.
Here is this year's list: http://www.mciu.org/Portals/0/MCIUDocuments/CIPD/Elem.%202013%20Booklist%20II.pdf

Halloween Permission Slips

I'm still missing a few Halloween permission slips. Your child will not be able to participate in our Halloween parade if they do not have the permission slip. If you need another one, please ask. If you do not want your child to participate, there will be an alternative activity for them, but please return the form.

Spelling Test Friday

This will be our last spelling test in Unit 1. Next week we will not have a spelling test, but we will have our Unit Test. I'll give everyone more info on that shortly.

Real World Daily Edits

I'm trying to start something new this year by encouraging students to find grammar errors outside of the classroom. If your student find one, they can do one of two things: take a picture of it if there is a camera or smart phone available or write down the grammatically incorrect text and where they found it. Either one is fine. I'm going collect the pictures on my blog as examples of common real world grammar errors. Errors in your little brother or sisters homework doesn't count. Here is an example  where they are missing an apostrophe (this was sent to me, but they are not related):

Sorry for the long post. That is everything, for now... :-)

Unit 2 Math Test Friday

We are going to have our Unit 2 math test this Friday.

We only have a spelling test this week in Communication Arts. Next week will be our Unit 1 test. Homework and classwork will be slightly different as we prepare. Note: If studying tonight, Partial-Difference Subtraction will be taught tomorrow.

I was able to find flashcards online to help us study for our math test.

Flashcards: http://quizlet.com/14193668/everyday-math-gr-4-unit-2-flash-cards/

Feel free to use our Family Letter as a study guide, too. A different study guide will be going home shortly.

Unit 2 Family Letter: https://www.wrightgroup.com/download/em/em3mm_g4_u02_family_letters.pdf

Also, please bring in any clear soda bottle you might have. We need them for a science project.

Partial-Sum & Column Addition

Today we learned two new ways to add. The students were able to quickly grasp partial-sums, but struggled with column addition. I think this is becuase it just seems like the traditional way they add, but with more (and confusing steps). Part of the theory behind our Everyday Math program is to develop a great "number sense." This means learning more than just one way to solve a problem.

I asked students who were struggling to bring home their Student Reference Books (pgs 10&11). These pages can also be access on www.everydaymathonline.com.

Here are two examples with videos (click the titles) of each method:

Partial-Sums

Column Addition

More examples can be found here under "Algorithms," "4," and then "Addition."

Clear Soda Bottles

Hello all,

A quick request:

If anyone has any clear 2-liter soda bottles at home please bring them in. We need them to build our ecotowers in science to similate an ecosystem. I have offered the students PROUD tickets if they can bring some in.

2 tickets for the older style bottles with straight sides
1 ticket for the newer bottles with curvey sides.

Thanks!

Science PSSA Test Date Change

PSSA Science Test is changed to Wednesday, October 17th. 

This was done to give the students more time to student. As I said before, these tests are historically challenging for students. You need to not only study, but be able to apply the knowledge learned too.

I have created a set of flashcards you can use for studying. These flashcards can be used to learn the terms and also to play games with. I think they can be accessed by a smart phone via a free app from Quizlet. If you use this, tell me what you think.

Study Guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/106eSCuAUj8dhSM3JRaqpsRPy0R_d-LMGiUEzW1Exn0g/edit

Flashcards: http://quizlet.com/_8vkqs

I have embedded this link to study, but if you click on the link above, you will be able to play some games with the words.

Today I sent home all of our tests in our Test Folders. If you can, please sign the tests in the folder by tomorrow. The students get a PROUD ticket for returning their Test Folder in one day. If you would like more time to look over the tests, please just write a note. If I get the note by tomorrow, they will get a PROUD ticket. Either way I will need all test folders returned by Friday, please. Today we talked briefly about what we can do better on our test. Each student came up with two or three goals for how they can better prepare for a test. Please review these and we will work as a team to make sure it happens.

We will have a test in Science PSSA on Thursday. These tests have historically been challenging for the students. They were given a Study Guide today. Please use it to guide your studying because it was developed from the test. I have a few extra copies if one is misplaced.

As always, please feel free to ask me any questions or share with me any concerns.