le 18 au 22 septembre 2023

Upcoming Dates

  • Wednesday, September 20 – Curriculum Night (6:00-7:00) Visit your child’s classrooms and hear from both teachers.
  • Wednesday, September 27 – School picture day!

Please ensure that you email BOTH TEACHERS when you communicate with us.

Le français:

Mme Jana kincaid_j@4j.lane.edu French & science teacher

This past week, we began correcting what I call the “horrible sentences.” I create a sentence with errors, and the students do their best to correct on their own or with a partner, then we go over the corrections together. This has multiple grammar lessons in it, and the students learn how to use editing marks. Also, the students did a little alphabetizing exercise for me to see what work we need to do there, and many students forgot about alphabetizing past the first letter. We began our cursive writing instruction this week with the letters c, a, d, g, h, t, p, e, l, and f. We’ll go through all lowercase (minuscule) letters, then progress and work through all uppercase (majuscule) letters. We began a logic packet called “Problèmes de logique,” this week, which many students enjoy. French assessments, which include writing, speaking, comprehension, reading, and listening will happen during the next two weeks. None of the assessments are very long, and I don’t put them all on the same day. I also introduced the kids to Sudoku this week. In the upcoming weeks, I will introduce the games Hidato and Ken-Ken. These are logic and number games, so practicing them in French is very doable. We also began our first art project, and we began a “Moi!” project which is all about them.

This week, we will begin French assessments, will continue to work on cursive writing and correcting sentences, and will continue with our art project and our “Moi!” project. We will conjugate the verb avoir (to have), and in upcoming weeks, we will conjugate the verbs être (to be), faire (to make or do), and aller (to go), then we’ll move on to verbs that end in -er, which is 90% of the verbs in French. In the next week or so, we will begin our French typing program called “Tap’Touche” which teaches students how to type with accents.

Please welcome our French intern for fourth grade, Ludivine Girardot. Ludivine is 22 and comes to us from Rueil-Malmaison, a suburb of Paris with a population of 80,000. She has an 18 yr old brother and a 12 year old sister. She has a degree in Applied Foreign Languages for which she studied English, German, law & economics. She has experience babysitting and helping students with homework. She wants to be a teacher and is eager to help our fourth graders with their French skills. She loves pets (and has two dogs and a cat), food (pasta, rice, cheese, bread, chocolate), nature, cars (especially Porsches), and books are her most favorite thing. She loves to walk in the forest, take photos, play and watch tennis, and watch movies. She says she is super happy to live in Oregon this year because she loves nature and nature in Oregon is beautiful. She looks forward to discovering the state through hiking. So, if you’d like to get to know our intern and help give her a positive experience while she’s here, consider taking her on an excursion or inviting her for a dinner. Her email is lgirardot9@gmail.com, and you can feel free to contact her directly.

Les sciences:  

We will begin our first science unit, Soils, Rocks, and Landforms (La terre, les pierres, et les formes du relief) in early October. 

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

Math

This week’s Key Concepts:

  • We can identify place value through the millions.
  • We can add and subtract numbers through the millions.
  • We can multiply any number by 10, 100 or even 1000.

In unit 1, Applying Place Value Concepts in Whole number Addition and Subtraction, we start by building concepts of place value in our base-10 number system. Students will be writing forms of numbers (word form, expanded form, base-10 picture form), and we will practice rounding skills.

At home, consider playing games that build your child’s fluency in addition and subtraction of 0-20. This will be VERY helpful as we jump next into adding subtracting large numbers in the millions. This is often a big jump for students coming from 3rd to 4th grade. Games like SKUNK or ADDITION WAR are fun ways to practice at home.

 

 

English

We started our new unit “A Great Heart” last week. Students discussed literal and figurative uses of the word heart in quotes from famous people like Nelson Mandela, Anne Frank, Confucius, and more. As a class, we began to talk about how to write organized paragraph.

This week, we will define what it means to be a greathearted. Students will read short biographies of 4 famous young women: Clara Barton, Malala Yousafzai, Marley Dias, and Greta Thunberg.  Then they will write an organized paragraph about why people may consider one of those women greathearted. In addition, we will be examining how to properly punctuate using quotation marks this week. Students will attempt to include evidence from their reading and a quote from the famous person in their paragraph.

Learn more about our Wit and Wisdom Curriculum here: Module 1: A Great Heart.