le 10 au 14 mars 2025
Upcoming Dates
- Monday-Monday, March 24-March 31 – Spring Break
- Tuesday April 1 – school resumes
- April 11 – No school – Professional Development for teachers
Please ensure that you email BOTH TEACHERS when you communicate with us.
(kincaid_j@4j.lane.edu and hopper_s@4j.lane.edu)
Le français
Jana Kincaid, French and Science kincaid_j@4j.lane.edu
This past week’s quiz was to apply the four rules from last week’s homework. These are not new rules, we’ve been using and discussing them all year. Happily, the average score was 90%, 71% of all students quizzed scored 85% or greater, and the most recurrent score was 107% with 10 incidents. Yay!
Many students have completed our newest “J’observe..” writing prompt, “Les garçons et la moto.”
The boys are in India, fresh from bathing at the canal in the village of Chachura in Utter Pradesh, precisely here. Many students though the boys were in Africa rather than Asia, but a few kids had it figured out.
Student goal: I can express myself in writing, conjugating verbs, creating interesting sentences, and respecting the grammar rules I have already been taught.
A number of students have completed their cursive instruction, although it will probably be another couple of weeks before everyone has finished. Now, we use our cursive just in our daily writing.
Student goal: I can find grammatical and punctuation errors in sentences in French.
Student goal: I can form lowercase and uppercase letters correctly in cursive.
Les sciences
This week, we labeled a drawing of the inside of an incandescent bulb, looked at the inside of a broken incandescent bulb, broke a CFL bulb to see how different it is inside, and we did a little check for understanding as well. Most students seem to understand that for a circuit to be complete, two contact points on the D battery (la pile D) and two contact points on the bulb need to be connected by metal. This week, we get to create a circuit that includes a switch (un interrupteur) and a motor (un moteur)! Also, we’ll be testing a large variety of materials to determine which are insulators (un isolant) and which are conducteurs (un conducteur).
Mme Shelli hopper_s@4j.lane.edu English & Math teacher
Math
YES HOMEWORK: Monday and Tuesday, please ask your child to show you their survival narrative. Wednesday and Thursday: Subtraction with regrouping practice.
Last week, we discussed subtraction of multiple digit numbers. This is a lot more complexity involved than addition, especially with regrouping/ borrowing across multiple place values. Homework this week will review subtraction.
In class, we’ll be solving problems with measurement conversions of time and metric length.
We are currently in week 2 of Bridges Module 4: Addition and Subtraction. Here’s the parent support page to explain the major concepts of this unit.
English
Wrapping up our EXTREME SETTINGS unit: Look for your child’s narrative survival story to come home on Monday. Be aware that the stories are not error free, but represent a few weeks of work for your child. They’ve met with teachers and peers and revised quite a bit.
Please take a few minutes Monday or Tuesday night for your child to read their story to you. As you talk about the narrative, please give them two compliments and one suggestion on their homework page. The parent page should be returned to school as homework, and the story may be kept at home. Thank you for supporting your child in this way.
We will finished reading Hatchet, by Gary Paulsen last week. This week we’ll wrap up the discussion of the major themes in the novel. Students will write a short essay about what they think one theme in the book is. Then on Tuesday, we’ll have a survival themed party with a game, Hatchet themed healthy snacks, and a short Netflix episode of You vs. Wild.
Coming up next, we’ll do a short persuasive writing unit. Students will read several persuasive texts to identify text structure. Then, they’ll practice writing persuasively about a topic that interests them. Be prepared to talk about important issues at home like: Should kids get allowance? How much screen time is appropriate? Should kids get more recess at school?
Books to encourage reading at home after Hatchet:
- Guts: The True Stories Behind Hatchet and the Brian Books, Gary Paulsen
▪ Hurricanes, Seymour Simon
▪ A Girl Named Disaster, Nancy Farmer
▪ The Sign of the Beaver, Elizabeth George Speare
▪ Navigating Early, Clare Vanderpool
▪ My Side of the Mountain, Jean Craighead George
▪ The River, Gary Paulsen (Hatchet series)
▪ Brian’s Return, Gary Paulsen (Hatchet series)
▪ Brian’s Winter, Gary Paulsen (Hatchet series)
▪ Brian’s Hunt, Gary Paulsen (Hatchet series)
▪ The Wild Robot, Peter Brown - Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O’Dell
▪ Time of Wonder, Robert McCloskey
Find out more about 4j’s 4th Grade English Curriculum. This fact sheet for parents also includes a full list of the texts we’ll read as well as additional texts that can be read at home to extend your child’s learning.
OBOB 2025- another one for the books!
OBOB is over for this year. Congratulations to EVERY student who read some new books during the competition. Also, congratulations to the Book Bunnies for moving on to our district competition on Saturday, March 15.
Reminders:
Healthy and Nut-Free Snacks
PE & Recess
At recess, students will be outside even in drizzle. So please have your child wear layers and a jacket or hat during rainy, cool weather. Also, students need secure and sturdy shoes on PE Days:
Blue Class PE & Library days: Monday & ThursdayRed Class PE & Library days: Tuesday & FridayDecember 9-13, 2024
We continued and most have completed our “J’observe…” activity this past week of “Les canetons.” We will begin a new writing prompt, but I don’t want to show the photo until the kids have seen it in class. Their writing is getting much more rich and interesting. Most students need to continue to incorporate grammar rules into their writing and speaking. Being able to do something in a pointed activity and being able to use it fluently in everyday use is a leap.
We began our new science unit on Energy (l’Énergie) this week by finding out what students already know about energy. This week, we’ll begin our first experiment by lighting a tiny bulb (une ampoule) using one or two electrical wires (un fil électrique) and a D battery (une pile D). Then we get to talk about circuits!
We continue to study geography (la géographie) as an introduction to the large Francophone (French-speaking) country project we do in the spring. We are identifying continents, major oceans, discussing the difference between cities, states, countries, and continents. We’ll be discussing border countries and bodies of water, the compass rose, and cardinal points.