It is pretty hard to believe that it is April and spring break is behind us. The Lafontaines had a fun, but mostly cold, trip to Massachusetts. I hope your break was fun and relaxing and that everyone at your house is ready for what is sure to be a busy spring of sports, recitals, science projects, field trips, Oregon Trail, testing, and I'm sure much more. Important reminders about this week and into the next:
A letter about testing went home during conferences, (or right after if you missed conferences). This week we will begin PRACTICING for testing (click on the word practicing to access practice tests at home). We will practice in the lab from 8:20-9:00 AM on Wednesday for the ELA CAT. Even though it is important that we practice the format of the tests and mentally prepare ourselves to focus and do our bests, I always tell students that we have been practicing for these tests all year simply by coming to school and learning what 4th graders are supposed to learn. The following is our testing schedule over the next two months:
Reading For the next 4 weeks we will continue our "Westward Movement" Pockets. These pockets are historical information about Westward expansion in the United States. Students practice reading nonfiction text, answering text based questions, noticing different structures of nonfiction text and summarizing text. This weeks pocket is "The New Frontier". This week we focus on the reading skills of visualizing what you read and determining the main idea of a nonfiction article. Book Study This week we continue our new book study, Among the Hidden, by Margaret Haddix. Writing In writing this week we continue to work on our expository nonfiction country reports. This week students will finish collecting research notes and move towards drafting. Science This week in science we are working on two different projects: -Students will finalize their project questions for their wildlife summit projects. -Students will create their blueprints for our civil engineering project on Earthquake Safe Design. Dictado (formerly spelling) Dictado is a new strategy we will be using to practice spelling (and punctuation, capitalization and sentence fluency). This week's dictado is as followed. How did Kenya become a country? Kenya was not always an independent country. In 1895, the British began their rule in Kenya. The British were cruel rulers and passed laws that prohibited Africans from owning land. In the 1940s, a group called the Kikuyu formed. Their purpose was to stand up to the British government. Teaching Points:
1 Comment
Sookyung Yoon
4/2/2018 07:34:49 am
Good Morning.
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