I wanted to start off by thanking you all for the thoughtful Valentine’s Day cards and goodies! I felt very loved and appreciated!
*Important Announcements This Week*
*Benchmarks Assessments: I will be sending home scores from the benchmark assessments on TUESDAY. Please remember that we did no preparations for these assessments in school, and we use these assessments to help us determine areas needed for review and remediation. The scores on these benchmark assessment will be recorded as a single classwork grade in reading, math, and social studies. These assessments were made by Henrico County, and are used as guides to help teachers know which areas students have a strong understanding and which areas might need more instruction and practice. Please sign and return the benchmark assessment paper by THURSDAY 2/21.
*MAP Assessments: Last week I spent time conferencing with each student about the upcoming spring MAP assessments (MAP stands for Measures of Academic Progress). Students will take the Reading MAP and the Math MAP in April (dates to sent home soon). During our conferences, students reviewed their performance on the fall assessments and we discussed their areas of strength and areas that were relative weaknesses. I suggested to students that when given the chance to select an area within the NWEA “MAP Learning Path” on Study Island, that they choose a topic from one of their weaker areas. Students also set a goal for themselves for the Spring MAP test. A letter will be coming home on Monday with some tips of things that you can do to help your child be successful on the NWEA MAP test, attached to your child’s growth report. Please sign and return your child’s NWEA Map Growth sheet by Wednesday 2/20.
Below is link to the NWEA website and their Parent Toolkit:
https://www.nwea.org/parent-toolkit
*Family Fitness Night: This Thursday evening is our Family Fitness Night. Mr. Gray has planned a fun evening for families to participate in a variety of activities. Our class is also working on a class poster about the sports of Australia. Each class selected a country, and students researched the popular sports of the country. The posters will be on display on Thursday evening.
*What Are We Learning In Class?*
Reading:
This week we will be reviewing the reading skill of cause and effect. We will use a book about Sonia Sotomayor, where students will learn about her life and find cause and effect relationships within the text. At the end of the week, students will create a “recipe” for an event that we are studying in social studies that will highlight the cause and effect that we see in real life as well. During small group rotations, students will meet with me in small group and we will continue our strategy work using leveled texts. Students will also rotate through their writing and silent reading rotations.
We will continue with word study this week. Please check in with your child this week to make sure that he or she is completing their homework carefully and correctly. Students will complete their word study sentence writing assessment and word study spelling assessment on Friday 2/22. Please be sure that your child is studying the meaning of the word and the word study feature so that they can correctly write sentences that demonstrate the meaning of the word.
*Math:
This week we will begin our next unit in math which will be measuring length. Students will be able to use their knowledge of fractions as they work to measure length to the nearest 1/8 of an inch using a ruler. Students will also learn about common units in US Customary and the metric system, and will need to be able to choose the most appropriate measurements for everyday objects.
Students will also learn how to convert within the US Customary system of measurement. In past years, students were required to memorize the equivalencies in US Customary and metric systems. With the update of our fourth grade math SOLs this year, students no longer have to have this information memorized! Instead, students will have it provided to them. I will teach students how to convert using multiplication when moving from a large unit to a small unit, and division when moving from a small unit to a large unit. Please check your child’s math notebook to see examples of our converting technique.
*Social Studies:
We will continue our unit on the Civil War this week (VS.7a). We will finish learning about important abolitionists who were against slavery. Then we will learn about the start of the Civil War at Ft. Sumter in South Carolina. Students will also learn about why Virginia was split and West Virginia was created in 1863. At the end of the week we will review all of the VS.7a information in preparation for the VS.7a Test on Tuesday, 2/26. Please encourage your child to study a little bit each night in preparation for this assessment.
*Science:
This week we will continue learning about electricity. We will discuss static electricity and current electricity, including the difference between open and closed circuits and series and parallel circuits.
Students have been working on making the vocabulary flashcards for the Electricity unit. These flashcards are due on Thursday 2/21.
On Tuesday of this week we will also have a lesson with the Math Science Innovation Center. Last month we traveled to the center for a field trip, and this week an instructor will come to our classroom for an interesting lesson about how nature inspires inventions!
Have a wonderful week!
-Mrs. Jacobsen