Thank you to all who made it to curriculum night! It was a pleasure to meet so many of you. In case you missed something or couldn’t make it here’s a link to our slides.

Homework:

Mme Shelli’s Class: This week is Word Study homework. Students should complete one page per night & bring it to class each day for correction & review. This week’s focus is on aw, ou, and au words. 

Mme Jana’s Class:  No homework this week!

Important Dates:

Oct 5-14   Read-a-thon week- Student record dates & minutes reading.  Parents initial.  Family & friends are welcome to donate to Charlemagne based on the minute read or a flat donation.

Oct. 11-12  NO SCHOOL for students.  Teacher professional development.

Oct 19    School pictures &  Health Screening

Mme Jana’s News 

FLA (French Language Arts):  We will begin reading groups this week. There are four groups; Victor and I will each take a group while the other half of the class works on the ipads on a couple of French language apps. Then, we’ll switch, so every group will get to read with one of us every time we do groups. 

We will finish learning how to write lowercase letters in cursive this week and will both begin capitol letters and will review blends. It’s b, v, w and o that are hard to attach to the next letter. I’ve got two full pages of tricky blends for the kids to practice on. 

We’ll begin our regular writing this week, writing to describe what I show them in various photos. We begin with sentence stems, then eventually, they write without my scaffolding.

A number of students have finished the “Moi” project, and I’ve begun to hang them in the stairwell.

Les sciences:  We began studying Energy (Énergie) this past week! We are working on electricity and will talk much more about and do experiments with circuits and what it takes to have a complete circuit. We’ll also be exploring materials that are either conductors or insulators.


Mme Shelli’s News

English Language Arts:  We will continue a unit on traditional tales.  Last week we read several tall tales, and this week we’ll read some myths from Greece and folktales from other countries.  Students are working on writing summaries, identifying point of view, identifying theme and using context clues and/or dictionaries to determine meaning of challenging vocabulary. You can read our main selection text in Lesson 18 of Journeys Text book at this link.

Math: We are finishing a unit on place value and addition and subtraction early this week.  This brief unit introduced the standard algorithm or method for adding and subtraction.  Some students mastered this concept while others will need more practice.  Over the next few weeks, we’ll cycle back and review.  Also on math homework weeks, I will always include a few subtraction and addition problems so that students can practice these skills. You might sit with your child when they do a few homework calculations to see how they are progressing in adding  and subtracting with regrouping (aka. carrying & borrowing.) 

Another way to see how your child is doing in math is to look for half-sheet math exit tickets. I sent 2-3 of these home last week.  These are quick math quizzes to check student understanding of concepts in class.  Points are 3=shows understanding, 2=partial understanding, 1=not yet showing understanding of concept.  Students who receive a 2 or 1 will meet with me for a brief mini-lesson & will have a chance to redo their work for understanding.  I will cross out their initial score & re-score after the reteach.

Later, this week we will begin a unit on factors and multiples.  It is essential that kids know their basic multiplication facts x0 through x10.  It is even better if they also know x11 & x12.  You can work on this at home to support your child.  This week, students begin to extend their knowledge of multiplication. Students will learn that a whole number is a multiple of its factors, and that numbers greater than 1 can be identified as prime or composite. Students will also build on their knowledge of patterns as they generate and analyze patterns to find features based on their knowledge of factors and multiples. 

 

Victor Picture HERE

Hi! My name is Victor and I am this year’s intern for 4th grade. I help Mme. Jana during French lessons and Mme. Shelli during math.

I am a native French speaker as I come from Angers in France. It’s a town in the western part of France near Britanny. I am 21 years old and I studied English Language Literature and Civilization for 3 years in college.

I’ve been interested in teaching for a few years as my mom is herself a high-school teacher and so I came here to get some experience, discover a new culture and a different way to teach. I’ve been in 4th grade for the past 3 weeks or so, and I’ve really been enjoying it, I feel like I’m truly useful, and I’m glad Mme. Jana and Mme. Shelli let me add my own personal touch to the lessons. I am hoping that I’ll teach the 4th-grade students just as much as they teach me every single day!