le 4 au 7 janvier 

                 We made it!

Upcoming Dates

Monday, January 3, 2022 – NO SCHOOL, Staff workday

Tuesday, January 4, 2022 – First day back for students

Monday, January 17, 2022 – NO SCHOOL, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

Friday, January 21, 2022 – NO SCHOOL, Grading day

Friday, January 28, 2022 – NO SCHOOL, Staff workday

Le français:

Mme Jana, French & Science kincaid_j@4j.lane.edu

•We speak only French in the French classroom.

•We conjugate verbs correctly and use them correctly in sentences.

•We have a positive attitude and growth mindset.

Welcome back! I have finished instructing all of the cursive letters. We have not yet, perhaps, mastered all of the letters, but we’ll keep working on it! We have one final project in cursive, but we’ll continue to write in cursive all year long. We also continue with the French typing program, Tap’Touche. 

This month, next week, in fact, the fourth grade will be doing a practice STAMP French proficiency assessment. STAMP is the assessment that students normally do in 3rd, 5th, 8th & 10th in language immersion. Since this group didn’t get to do the assessment in third grade, this will help them be familiar with the one that “counts” next year. It will take us about two weeks to complete. It will help us assess where students are after our year and a half of Covid restrictions. Reading, writing, speaking, and listening will be assessed. All of the assessments will not occur on the same day. 

This week’s homework centers on a word family. The word is jour, which means “day.” Our words are un jour (a day), une journée (a day/daytime), bonjour (hello/good day), toujours (always, i.e. all the days), aujourd’hui (today), le journal (journal or newspaper), un séjour ( a stay, like a short vacation), journellement (daily), un/une journaliste (a journalist), and mis à jour (up-to-date).

We’ll also conjugate faire (to make or do), aller (to go) and -er verbs (any verbs that end in -er when not conjugated, i.e. 90% of verbs) this week and next.

Les sciences:

We will do a little bit of follow-up with the Soils, Rock, and Landforms science unit. Sometime this month, we’ll begin Energy (l’Énergie).

Mme Shelli, English & Math
hopper_s@4j.lane.edu

Fractions

•We can decompose fractions in several ways.

•We can solve problems with addition and subtraction of fractions and demonstrate understanding on number lines and area models.

In class:

We continue Unit 4: Decomposing & Composing Fractions.  Students will be solving various complex word problems and will demonstrate their understanding by modeling and explaining their thinking with bar models, number lines and/or area models.

Math Homework: None this week.

English Writing

•We will explore new fiction and non-fiction in our classroom.

•We will study homophones & the grammar of sentences.

Reading: Our class received two grants two replenish outdated English novels and books in our classroom. The French classroom also received some new books. We have already received about 100+ new books and hope to receive several more. Students had a chance to submit titles to add our class library, too! In order to celebrate our new books and to foster time for independent reading, this week’s reading time will be focused on finding new books that pique student interests, sharing with others about good books, and compiling a list of books to read next.

Wordstudy & Grammar: This week we will wrap up a homophone & easily confused word study that we started in December. Then we will begin a unit on grammar of sentence structure. This week students will learn about subjects, predicates, nouns and verbs. They will also begin to identify types of sentences and appropriate end of sentence punctuation.

NEW curriculum!

Mme Shelli is on a district leadership team to help adopt a new English Language Arts Curriculum to replace Journeys.  For the next 8 weeks, we will pilot one of the potential curricula called Expedition Learning. Next week, we’ll begin Unit 1: Poetry, Poets, and Becoming Writers which includes a study of the short novel called Love that Dog by Sharon Creech as well as various other poems. You can get an overview of the curriculum here.

After about 40 district classrooms pilot two finalist curricula, we will give feedback to the district before it selects the a curriculum to be used district wide in 2022-23. Please know that using a new curriculum can be challenging for both students and teachers, but will surely be exciting and refreshing change after using our previous curriculum for several years. If you have any questions, contact Mme Shelli.

After school choir possibility:

Hi families! Is your student interested in singing? In January, we will start an after-school choir dedicated solely to our 4th and 5th-grade students. The choir will meet once a week after school on Tuesdays for 40 minutes. Talk with your student over the break to gauge their interest in joining a choir, and be on the lookout for information and a signup form the first week of January. Thank you! ~Mme Doyle.