I wanted to send a sincere THANK YOU for all of the thoughtful and generous teacher appreciation cards, flowers, treats, and gifts that were sent in for Teacher Appreciation Week! I truly felt so appreciated!!! It was so wonderful to read such thoughtful notes written by my students! Thank you!! 🙂
I can’t believe that we are almost at the end of May! I am extremely proud of the students’ hard work on their reading and math SOL tests over the last 2 weeks. We will take our last SOL test, the Virginia Studies SOL Test on Wednesday 5/22. Thank you for helping to keep your child focused throughout the last few weeks. Please encourage your child to review at home and to work carefully on all homework assignments.
*Important Announcements*
*Fire Safety: The students did a wonderful job practicing fire safety in the practice trailer with the Henrico County firefighters last week. Hopefully your child has showed you the assignment to create a fire escape plan for your home. These fire escape plans are due on Tuesday, May 21.
*SPES Spring Carnival: The SPES Spring Carnival is coming up on May 31st! Fliers went home last week to purchase tickets for this fun event. Please also consider signing up to volunteer, because we can’t have it unless we have adults helping out. Sign-ups are on MySchoolAnywhere. Please consider creating our class’s carnival game or teaming up with another family from our class and taking on this task together. Please reach out to me our our room parents with questions. Thank you!!
*Field Day: Field Day will be Thursday, June 6th. Sign-ups for volunteers are happening on MySchoolAnywhere. If you are planning on attending Field Day, please consider volunteering some of your time.
Since Field Day will be different this year, here is some information that Mr. Grey provided in “The Buzz” to help you understand what it will be like:
Field Day 2019 will be an all-day event with grade levels and classes rotating around to multiple activities inside and outside of the school building. These are activities are:
1. Field Events at the Short Pump Park football field (next door to the school)
2. Sidewalk Games on the sidewalk leading up to Short Pump Park
3. Fun Run activity on the track behind the school
4. Kids Heart Challenge (Jump Rope for Heart) in the gymnasium inside the school
5. Taekwondo Training Session in the cafeteria inside of the school
Each grade level will be rotating to each activity at different times and has a lunch built in to their schedule. Students have the option to bring in their own lunch or order bagged lunches from the cafeteria. You will be receiving a note home from the cafeteria staff about orders for lunches.
All of fourth grade will be having lunch in the parent drop off/parent pickup area. There is a nice shady area where we will all eat our lunch. Please bring a blanket and your lunch and join us for lunch on Field Day.
*What Are We Doing in Class?*
*Reading/Language Arts:
We will do one last word study unit this week, focusing on commonly misspelled words, in preparation for 5th grade writing. Students will take the Word Study Test on Friday 5/24. Later this week I will begin assessing students on their end-of-year reading level through one-on-one reading assessments. These are not graded assessments, but will be used to help students know their reading level going into 5th grade. Students will also be working on reading independently, reviewing for the Social Studies SOL test, writing poetry, and creating a “Virginia Studies ABC” book.
*Math:
Now that the Math SOL test is over, we will not have any new math instruction this year. Students will be working on their “Fractions Most Wanted” projects in class, various challenge assignments, and we will play various math games, including Math 24.
*Social Studies:
Our Virginia Studies SOL Test is this Wednesday, May 22nd. We will spend the last few days reviewing the modern 20th and 21st century units, VS.9 & VS.10. We will also work together to create a large timeline of all of the important events we have learned this year. It is also very important for students to know the geography of the important events on a blank Virginia map. We will review this idea in class on Tuesday.
*Science:
This week we will continue our plant unit by learning about the parts of a flower and the processes of pollination and fertilization in the flower. Please encourage your child to be reviewing his or her notes and vocabulary. Students will take the flower parts quiz on Friday May 24. Then we will review all of our plants unit on Tuesday, 5/28, in preparation for the Plants Test on Wednesday, 5/29.
Have a wonderful week!
-Mrs. Jacobsen