Homework:

Mme Shelli’s Class: There is nightly spelling homework this week.  Students will also bring home an additional yellow homework assignment to share their Oregon Geography books with you.  Please sign & return the yellow page.  Keep the booklet.

Mme Jana’s Class:  There is no French homework on my side until after winter break. However, the vocabulary from this past week’s homework were pretty hard, so we’ll keep working with those words in class. I’m attaching a copy here in case you or your child wants access. 27 nov au 1er déc 2017 Vocab

Important Dates:

Monday, Dec. 4             No School – Academy day for teachers

Dec. 16- Jan. 2               No School – Winter break

Jan. 3rd                           First day back for students in 2018

January 15                       No School- Martin Luther King Jr. Day

Mme Jana’s News 

Thanks so much to the parents and students that have given me cards, notes and hugs about my dad. I appreciate it.

FLA (French Language Arts): We have worked through conjugating two irregular verbs, avoir (to have) and être (to be), and also verbs ending in -er, which accounts for most French verbs. Conjugating doesn’t come naturally, and then being sure to use the conjugations correctly when writing and speaking are even more challenging, so we’ll be working on verbs all year. We’ll introduce conjugating the verb faire (to make or to do) before winter, then the last of the four primary irregular verbs aller (to go), in January. We’ll also work on vouloir (to want) and pouvoir (to be able). These two verbs, in addition to avoir, être, faire and aller will allow students to write and say most of what they want.

The children wrote their own sentences this week, which they were able to do for the most part. Some students didn’t follow the instruction in English that the word had to be used in a sentence that showed they understood the word, i.e. J’ai un circuit fermé. (I have a closed circuit.) Clearly, any noun could be placed in this sentence, so it is not an acceptable effort, and those children will be remaking sentences next week. Also, many students are forgetting sentence basics, like that the sentence must begin with a capital letter and end with punctuation. If you notice either of these things when you are signing the homework Wednesday evenings, please ask your child to correct them so that Mathilde and I don’t have to ask 59 children to do so at school. Merci!

We began Tap’Touche, which is our French typing program, and this will help the students to be able to type and learn how to insert accents. In French, if the word doesn’t have the appropriate accent marks, it can completely change the meaning of the word, let alone the pronunciation. For example, ou means “or” and means “where.” I’ve also noticed that students can use more practice keeping their fingers on the home keys, sitting correctly and figuring out which keys to hit with which fingers. This will all help improve their speed and accuracy.

Sciences: We’ll complete the Energy unit before winter break, then in January, we’ll begin a new unit, La terre, les pierres, et les formes du relief, aka Soils, Rocks and Landforms. It is also a fun unit with plenty of hands-on experiments.


Mme Shelli’s News

ELA: Students just finished a mini-booklet about Oregon Geography and history.  Your child will bring it home this week (12/5) to share with you as part of a homework assignment. 

In reading last week, students began a three week novel study of the books Sing Down the Moon or Soft Rain.  These books, written for children, feature Native American characters who experience great hardship at the coming of Western settlers during the latter part of the nineteenth century.  

Students will be reading for an extended time each day and they will participate in 2-3 discussion groups per week. As a class, we will be comparing the experience of the main characters to real-life experiences of Oregon’s Native peoples during the time of Westward Expansion.

Math: We finish LearnZillion unit 3 – Fractions.  Students are improving communication of math strategies as they add and subtract fractions by drawing number lines & area models, labeling their work, and explaining their thinking with clarity. This week students will be solving problems with addition and subtraction of fractions with like denominators and using mixed numbers.  Find out more about Unit 3 goals at this link.

Dreambox/ Sum Dog Technical Assistance

We have two math programs kids are able to use from home for math practice.  Dreambox has a limited subscription for about half of the class.  If your child is using this, you may need to update your Flash; here’s a link with instructions. For SumDog, I have a subscription for the other half of the class & a free account for everyone.  You also will need flash to use SumDog.  The link above may help you install Flash on your computer.

Yearbook club starts next week

Is your 4th grader interested in taking part in the making of an amazing yearbook? If so, we’d love to have your child participate in Yearbook Club. We’ll meet every other Monday and this year we’ll be working mostly on computers. Students who are excited about graphic design, photography, and working on computers and can meet after school are welcome to join us. Our first Yearbook club meeting is scheduled for 3:00-3:45 on Monday, December 11th.  Mme Shelli has permission slips; ask her for one if interested. You can also contact Mme Michele at jensen_m@4j.lane.edu, or Mme Elise at salmond_e@4j.lane.edu for more details. 

Thank you!
 
Meeting days
Dec 11th
Jan 8th
Jan 22nd
Feb 12th
Feb 26th
Mar 12th
April/May TBA
 
Head Lice

You may wish to monitor your child for head lice over the next few weeks. We are going into our winter break times and when students return from breaks, lice cases tend to flare. This is attributed to the fact that lice are most often transmitted in the community and identified at school (evidence shows lice are rarely transmitted at school—so that is the good news! It is much less ‘contagious’ in a school setting than the common cold.)  If you want more information about head lice, contact our Nurse Laurie Morgan.