I hope the class had a nice 3-day weekend! We are officially halfway through the year! It’s hard to believe that we are beginning the 3rd quarter of 4th grade. Keep up all of the great work, everyone!
*Important Announcements*
*Kindness Week: This week is Kindness Week at SPES. A letter went home last week from Ms. Walker explaining the different spirit days for the week and activities that your child will be taking part in. Below is a reminder of the spirit days for the week:
- Tuesday – Wear red and/or pink
- Wednesday – Wear yellow and black
- Thursday – Wear bright colors
- Friday – Wear jerseys
*Benchmark Assessments: Students will take their next benchmark test this week on math. They will take part 1 of the math benchmark on Wednesday, 1/30 and part 2 on Thursday, 1/31. We will not be reviewing for the benchmark in school in order to get an accurate view of what students have truly mastered during the first semester of 4th grade. Students will take the Social Studies benchmark test on Tuesday, 2/5. Thank you in advance for helping your child get a good night’s rest, eat a healthy breakfast, and arrive to school on time.
*What Are We Learning In Class?*
*Reading:
During our whole group lessons this week we will analyze dialogue in fiction text. Students will make inferences based on the “dialogue tags” that the author chose to use. Dialog tags are things such as: … he said, … she exclaimed, …Sarah whispered, and …Mr. Smith shouted. During small group rotations, students will meet with me in small group and we will continue our strategy work using leveled texts to practice fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension strategies. Students will also read to self and work on their writing.
We will do any new word study features this week due to our benchmark testing in the morning.
*Math:
This week we will study a new unit on probability. Students will use what they learned about fractions to determine the likelihood, or the chance, of a given event. Students will learn to use words (impossibly, unlikely, equally likely, likely, and certain) and ratios to describe probability. This is not a very long unit, but requires students to take their time and think carefully when determining the probability of an event. Students will complete a short probability classwork grade on Thursday, 1/31.
On Friday we will begin our next unit which will continue our work on fractions. This unit will focus on the computation of fractions. We will begin by learning about greatest common factor. Please help your child with this very important process of determining the greatest common factor because we will use it throughout the fraction unit.
*Social Studies:
This week we will continue our New Nation VS.6 unit. We will learn about 2 important documents that were written by famous Virginians, and were the basis for the Bill of Rights for the U.S. Constitution (VS.6b). These 2 documents can be challenging for students to remember and understand, so please encourage your child to review them at home. Then we will learn about westward migration (VS.6c), and learn how geography influenced migration in Virginia. Students will take the VS.6 New Nation Test on Tuesday, 2/5.
*Science:
We will continue our unit on Force, Motion, & Energy this week. We will learn about the following concepts:
- energy (potential and kinetic) and work
- Energy, Force, and Motion Vocabulary Quiz on Friday 2/1
- Next week we will complete a scientific investigation in class
- Force, Motion, & Energy Test on Thursday, 2/7
Have a great week!
-Mrs. Jacobsen