le 30 janvier au 2 février 2023   

Upcoming Dates

  • Friday, February 3:  NO SCHOOL. Teachers prepare report cards
  • Tuesday, February 14:  Valentine’s Day – Please do not send individual cards to school with your children. We have a tradition in 4th grade. Each student makes his/her own large, glittery card prior to Valentine’s Day in Mme Jana’s soon-to-be very glittery room. (We’ll do that on February 9 or 10.) At the end of Valentine’s Day, we take about half an hour, we open up the doors between the two rooms, and everyone signs everyone else’s cards. It’s always a good time.
  • Monday, February 20:  NO SCHOOL, Presidents Day

Child Protection Unit
All grades are participating in a required child protection unit this month. Fourth grade will be covering lessons on the topics:

We can stay safe in unsafe situations by:
    +Recognizing unsafe situations
    +Reporting to an adult unsafe situations
    +Refusing: Say words that mean “No”

Each night, there will be a family letter that goes home to explain what we talked about in class with optional family discussions. Listed here are our daily topics as well as a few optional discussion topics for home:

Monday:  Keep safe in emergencies & make a plan; Please verify that your child knows key phone numbers and your address. Post them somewhere. Students today often don’t have these memorized.


Tuesday: Keep Safe by Asking First; Discuss safety concerns in your household. At home, consider a discussion about gun safety (not part of our curriculum) even if you don’t own a gun.


Wednesday: Unsafe & Unwanted Touch


Thursday: Private Body Parts Rule

To know more about the Second Step Child Protection Unit, read the Family letter or contact Mme Shelli.

What’s up! Quoi de neuf?

Please send your child to school in proper footwear and a water-repellent jacket when the weather is threatening. Students will go out to recess unless the principal decides the weather prevents it. If your child is ill, or has had a fever or vomited within the previous 24 hours, please keep your child home. Please continue to follow current Covid rules as well. If your child will be absent, please email both teachers (kincaid_j@4j.lane.edu and hopper_s@4j.lane.edu) and please call in and leave a message on the school line (541) 790-7080 or for our new secretary, Eliza Drummond, at drummond_e@4j.lane.edu.

Le français:

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

•We speak exclusively in French during French class.

•We write in complete sentences and can identify many parts of speech.

•We are learning world geography.

We continue to study world geography, including naming continents and oceans in French, identifying the cardinal directions, putting together world puzzles, learning new vocabulary, etc. 

This week, we’ll finish up our winter French evaluations with a writing and a speaking evaluation. I’m impressed with how far so many students have come already this year.

We’ve been working on conjugating verbs, including vouloir (to want), pouvoir (to be able), mettre (to put or place), prendre (to take), tenir (to hold), and venir (to come). We’ve been working on prepositions and partitives, including figuring out when it’s de (of/from) vs du, de la, des, or de l’, as well as when it’s à (to/at) vs à la, au, aux ou à l’. French grammar (la grammaire) has a lot of rules and a lot of exceptions. We’re also working on rules to help us figure out if nouns are masculine or feminine.

No French homework this week!

Les sciences:

We finished up our study of Soils, Rocks, and Landforms, and all students have completed their open-journal evaluations. So, the science evaluations all came home this past Friday, but please remember that your child’s score on his open-journal evaluation may not necessarily reflect his report card grade. I gave a lot of hints to a lot of students. We had our very successful “Bring in your rock collection day” this past Friday. In February, we’ll begin Energy (l’Énergie).

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

Math

Unit 5: Understanding fraction equivalence and comparison

•We can use many strategies for comparing and ordering fractions.

•We can generate equivalent fractions.

 •We can find common denominators to compare.

                                           

Students will reason to order fractions this week. Here’s a game we played in class last week & is great to play at home, too.

We will wrap up our fraction unit as we reason about fractions in several ways. This week we continue to use the strategies we’ve been learning to compare fractions, choosing the best strategy for each situation. We will discuss how finding a common denominator is a way to add and subtract fractions this week.

This unit builds on students’ conceptual understanding of fractions to allow them to compare with reasoning. Students move beyond drawing models. Though mathematical procedure is important, they will hopefully build a deep understanding of fractions. Students will also analyze why multiplying a numerator and denominator by the same number will generate an equivalent fraction.

There IS math review homework for three nights. Consider playing Fraction War with your child.

English 

Literature & Writing: Unit 2 Extreme Settings

We will read the non-fiction text, Mountains by Seymour Simon. This complex scientific text describes several mountain ranges in the world and how they were formed. Students will collect notes as they read and build a list of interesting vocabulary to describe mountains. Additionally, students will read excerpts from SAS Survival Handbook to learn about dangers and survival techniques in mountainous regions.

The following week, students will work in collaborative groups to research one of the mountain ranges and to create a group poster and oral presentation.

Information about this ELA unit can be found here.

After School CLUB

Plays in French

As in the fall, IHS French Immersion high school students are running a French Play group for fourth and fifth graders to write and produce their own plays. These small group sessions last about an hour on zoom and meet once a week. During this time, a group of two high school students will help students write scripts in French and record short plays on zoom. This is an excellent opportunity for the different generations of French Immersion students to engage, and for all parties to practice French outside of school. (This program is through Rotary Interact, meaning that the high schoolers get volunteer hours.)
 
They already have a selection of students from SEHS who are eager to start mentoring. Finding students from Charlemagne is the next step. The following link is the parent sign-up sheet for the next three months. Please sign your student up for a French Play group here:  https://tinyurl.com/2023frenchplays