We started off our week looking back at 2019 and setting goals for 2020! We discussed resolutions and decided instead to focus on ONE WORD that we could each focus on as we enter a new year (and decade)! Students were very thoughtful in this and chose words like confidence, empathy, humble, determination, etc. Ask your child what ONE WORD they chose!

In reading, fourth grade is learning about sensory details in text and how these details add to not only an understanding of the text but also help create a mental picture and a connection to the text. Understanding how powerful these details are also directly impacts students’ writing! Next week we will focus on author’s purpose.
Fifth grade is working on TEXT STRUCTURE. There are five main nonfiction text structures and we are working on identifying the structures when reading texts by using clue words and looking at the overall purpose of the text. We will continue this next week as well!

In Virginia Studies, we are looking at the American Revolution! We have discussed the causes and are now looking at important leaders and people who had an impact. Our field trip to St. John’s Church comes at the perfect time! While students DO NOT need to know about the specific acts/taxes that England imposed to upset the colonists, we discussed them to give students a better understanding of why this war was fought.
In social studies, fifth grade is wrapping up our study of the SOUTHEAST! We have written songs to practice the states and capitals, and we are currently working on summative projects to tie in our focus on the five themes of geography. These projects are due on TUESDAY. We will have our southeast states and capitals quiz next FRIDAY. Some students have these down, while others definitely need to be studying. Click here for some practice! They will need to be able to label the state on a map and name the capital city.

In WRITING, both fourth and fifth are working on informational/descriptive writing. We are learning about the research process, citing sources, and finding reliable sources! Fourth grade is writing about a state! They chose one of the 13 original colonies to research and will begin writing drafts next week. Fifth grade has chosen an animal to do their research on to connect to their adaptations unit in science! 🙂

• MONDAY JANUARY 20th : NO SCHOOL
• Friday January 17: VA Studies VS5 Test (4th); Southeast States and Capitals test (5th)
• BENCHMARK TESTING:
  -READING 4th/5th JANUARY 21, 22
  -VA Studies (4)/Science (5) JANUARY 31
  –MATH 4th/5th FEBRUARY 6, 7
• Thursday January 23: FAMILY LIFE LESSONS 8:30-10:40
  Thursday January 23: BOTTLE BUDDY PROJECTS DUE (4th)
• Click here for information about ILL STUDENT POLICIES from Nurse Combee
  

  Click here to check out updates for math and science from Ms .Poland!

  

WOW! I can’t believe it is already time for winter break! I’d like to start by saying THANK YOU SO MUCH for the extremely generous gifts and goodies. I felt so spoiled this week and appreciate your kindness so much! We also are really grateful for your donations to the winter party. It is so great that we get to enjoy this day together and celebrate our year so far.

Please enjoy your winter break!
NO SCHOOL DECEMBER 23-27 and DECEMBER 30-JANUARY 3rd.
WE WILL START BACK MONDAY JANUARY 6th! 🙂

FIELD TRIP TO St. John’s Church to hear Patrick Henry’s famous speech on January 10th! 🙂 Sorry– no chaperones needed. We will be gone from 9:00-11:45. We will eat lunch when we return so feel free to send a snack for before the trip!!

See you all in 2020!!

Happy Friday and welcome to the final countdown before winter break! I know that it is a hectic time of year, but we have had a great week!!

In reading, fourth grade started learning about media messages. Today, we get information through many different sources of media. Over the next few weeks we will discuss the different types of media (auditory, visual, and written) as well as how to access, analyze, and create media. It is important students know how to evaluate the messages they receive from all the different types of media they access as well as determine if sources are trustworthy and reliable!

In writing, both fourth and fifth grade wrapped up personal narratives. This took a BIG CHUNK of our year, but it really sets up for a successful remainder of the year in writing as we discussed how to write an introduction, having a strong lead, body paragraphs, sensory details, conclusions, indenting, revising, editing, etc!! I feel really proud of the work they published and look forward to sending home typed copies of stories as soon as students are done typing. This week and next we are doing a quick mini writing unit on WRITING A HOW TO piece. Students are writing directions on how to draw a snowman or gingerbread house for a student in the other class. The other student will then attempt to follow the directions and see how accurate their drawing can turn out. Our focus here is on using precise language and details!! We also really rely on SMOOTH TRANSITIONS (first, next, after that).

In VIRGINIA STUDIES, fourth grade is wrapping up VS4 COLONIAL LIFE. We have discussed how there were no banks in Virginia in colonial times, so colonists depended on tobacco as currency and used bartering to get what they need. This also led to great discussions about savings, debt, and credit! Lastly, we wrapped up by discussing the moving of the capital from Jamestown to Williamsburg and then from Williamsburg to RICHMOND! Please check out SOLPASS.ORG (password tigers) to study! TEST TUESDAY DECEMBER 17th!

In social studies, fifth continued our study of the five themes of geography with a continued focus on longitude and latitude. We will apply what we have learned with an in class project identifying the five themes of geography within the southeast region. We introduced the southeast states and capitals! Students are working to write a song to help them learn the states and capitals. We will take a test on the southeast region after break! Study guides can be found in interactive notebooks. Stay tuned for an official date on this.

• Monday December 16th: Snowman/Snowflake Day! This is also STEM day for us in the afternoon. No supplies needed.
• Tuesday December 17th: COLONIAL LIFE TEST (fourth grade).Timber Tuesday: Dress as a lumber jack in plaid! This is also our reading day — bring  a blanket and pillow to get cozy and read.
• Wednesday December 18th: Winter Accessory: Wear your favorite winter headband, necklace, socks, sweater! This is our CRAFT DAY! No supplies needed.
• Thursday December 19th: Hoilday Hat day! This is our GAME DAY! Bring a board or card game from home. No electronics please!
• Friday December 20th: Pajama Day/Winter Festivities!! 1:00 WINTER PARTY!
• December 23-January 3: WINTER BREAK; NO SCHOOL
• January 10th: St. John’s Church field trip for fourth grade. NO COST! Please return permission slips as soon as possible

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It was so great to see all these lovely, smiling faces back this week after Thanksgiving and even more special to see some familiar faces last night at Waffles with Santa!! I enjoyed getting to serve up some tasty treats and encourage you to to check it out next year if you didn’t have a chance to come this year! Here’s what we worked on this week, as well as a glance of what we’ve got next week!

We read and discussed a story called “I Live in a Refugee Camp” in our Storyworks magazine. This opened up some awesome conversation about global issues and it was really nice to get to hear different perspectives and students’ thoughts! We stuck to the facts that we knew, so students might come home with some questions or interested in doing some research! We will continue looking at this story next week while making inferences and determining the main idea.

Next week, in fourth grade we are beginning a new unit called Media Messages where we will be learning about the three different types of media and determining the purpose of each! Fifth grade will be focusing on Main Idea and supporting details of nonfiction texts!

We are wrapping up our Personal Narratives this week! Next week we will work on OPINION WRITING. I think this will be a nice change of pace and we’ve been looking at narratives for the majority of our year. Here is an outline of writing expectations for both fourth and fifth to take a peek at the things we will be working on. We will focus mainly on supporting an OPINION using facts and evidence.

VA STUDIES: Fourth grade is working on VS4 Colonial Life! We will have a test on this information NEXT FRIDAY! Study guides should come home glued in notebooks each night next week. If you sign the study guide, students can earn bonus points for their test! 🙂 You can also visit the following websites for review: Colonial Virginia Study Guide; Colonial Va PPT; Cultural Landscapes PPT; Colonial Va matching review

SOCIAL STUDIES: We continue to work through the five themes of geography! Absolute Location (using longitude and latitude) proved to be a little trickier than they originally predicted, but I think we have finally got it! We will continue to practice with the five themes while studying the SOUTHEAST next week! Look for a states and capitals study guide and quiz date to come home before Holiday Break!

• MONDAY 12/9 IS STEAM DAY! HALF DAY!
• TUESDAY 12/10 READING QUARTER 2 4.5 WEEK ASSESSMENT (4th/5th)
• THURSDAY 12/12-Literacy Night at Hermitage High School 6-8 PM
• FRIDAY 12/13- VS 4 Colonial Life Assessment (4th)
• FRIDAY 12/20- Pajama Day/Winter Festivities!!

It is almost time for Thanksgiving Break! Let’s make these last two days positive and full of knowledge!  This week we began our joint resource with Ms. Poland’s class. We think this is a wonderful opportunity for students to get to know each other in the zone program as well as do some more in depth cross curricular projects in the arts!

Monday was STEAM DAY! This was a unique opportunity we had to start a longer project with a younger grade. We teamed up with students from Ms. Gouldman’s class to complete the GREAT GIVING CHALLENGE! We brainstormed problems in our everyday life that we could solve with something we create. Students worked with kindergarten buddies and brainstormed ideas. Our group decided to make stress balls/fidget toys and Ms. Gouldman’s group decided to make animal feeders. Stay tuned for our next STEAM day in December when we make our products!

Tuesday we worked with Ms. Capano on our Jamestown storyboards! Students are working to save their storyboard images as a gif and then record voice over to make it into a video. We ran into some technical difficulties with the formatting of the videos so stay tuned for this project.

Wednesday we continued our learning about MAKING INFERENCES! Making an inference is when a reader reads between the lines or draws conclusions about the text even when things aren’t explicitly said. This is tricky because students have to look at a text closely and they have to have their own background knowledge. Each student’s background knowledge is different so we all make different inferences!

Spanish: We learned how to count to 100!! 🙂 So impressed with this learning.

Writing: Both 4th and 5th grade are wrapping up personal narratives. We are aiming to add sensory details and transition words to make our writing flow more smoothly. Fifth grade also did the IB Writing assessment (if applying). THEY DID SUCH A GREAT JOB! Mrs. Bushey had only glowing things to say about how hard they worked. I am so proud of them.

Virginia Studies: we wrapped up Jamestown and are continuing to learn about colonial life! We will pick this up on Monday! Here is the VS4 Colonial Life study guide if you want a sneak peek! 

Social Studies: We are looking at the five themes of geography! This is helping us transition into learning about the regions of the United States! We are discussing map skills this week– including longitude and latitude and using a map scale! We also presented our Henrico Advertising Projects today!! Ask your student what company they think should relocate to Henrico.

• November 27-29: Thanksgiving Break

Monday is STEAM day / Half Day / and classroom awards day starts at 7:45! Please join us if you are able!
READING: Fourth grade wrapped up our study of nonfiction text features. We are wrapping this up with a cumulative project where students get to create their own nonfiction article complete with text features of his/her choice. We discussed why text features help us read a text and did some work to identify how they make reading easier. We are also discussing how to make inferences and draw conclusions based on what the already know and what the text tells them.  Both fourth and fifth grade took our 9 Week Reading assessments on Wednesday. Scores are posted in Power School! I am proud of their work.

WRITING: We are working on personal narratives! We focused on writing a strong lead and writing using the five senses. Students chose one small event from their life to focus on. Next week we will wrap up our body paragraphs and conclusion! Fifth graders have also been preparing for the IB writing assessment. Students applying to IB will take a writing assessment next week so we’ve practiced by doing power writing each day. Ask your fifth grader how this has helped them feel more confident about writing!

VA STUDIES (4th): We wrapped up our study of JAMESTOWN! We will take our JAMESTOWN TEST ON TUESDAY! Students should have plenty of material to study in notebooks. Here is another version of a study guide for you to use! If you sign a page in their interactive notebooks saying they studied over the weekend, I will give them bonus points! 🙂 You can also study at SOLPass.Org (password tigers).

SOCIAL STUDIES (5th): In social studies this week, we are wrapping up our Henrico Advertising projects and we began our study of geography by taking a look at the five themes: human-environment interaction, movement, location, place, and region. Throughout the remainder of the year we will learn about the regions of the United States by exploring through the lenses of the five themes. Ask your child what the five themes of geography are!

In SPANISH we learned how to count to 50! Ask your child if they know their numbers! This was tricky! 🙂 We will go to 100 next year!

• Monday November 18th: STEAM/HALF DAY/AWARDS CELEBRATION
• Tuesday November 19th: Jamestown Test! Students should be bringing home Virginia Studies Notebooks to study! They have study guides glued in. You may also visit SOLPASS.org and click VS3!
• November 20: Report Cards come home. Please return signed envelopes.
• November 22: PICTURE MAKEUP AND RETAKES
• November 27-29: Thanksgiving Break

MONDAY was PAW ACHIEVEMENT! Students who showcased their PAW VALUES were invited to play in a kickball tournament with the students from Greenwood. We had a lot of fun and got to work on our teamwork. I am really proud of my homeroom and how they worked together!

In reading, fourth grade continued our study of nonfiction text features. We also started BLOOD ON THE RIVER! This book has some tricky vocabulary from the time period so we are also working on using our context clues to determine words we don’t know. Fifth grade is finally wrapping up Because of Mr. Terupt! We discussed short and long term predictions and how we use our schema, or background information, to make a prediction about what will happen next. We are on the edge of our seats to figure out what happens to Mr. Terupt! Ask your child what their prediction was this week.

In VA Studies, we are continuing in our study of Jamestown. Our reading of Blood on the River helps bring these concepts we have learned about to life! We discussed the General Assembly today. We talked about how in 1619 the General Assembly met as one big group including the Governor, Governor’s Council, and Burgesses. In 1643, though, this changed!

Here are some games to review this:
https://www.quia.com/cz/8085.html?AP_rand=1858631230
https://www.quia.com/rr/35821.html

Fifth grade social studies is wrapping up our study of Henrico County with an advertising project. “Henrico County is trying to draw in new businesses. There are lots of great reasons to locate a business in Henrico, but they need your help to showcase these great reasons! You are taking on the role of a member of the Henrico Economic Development Authority. As a member, you will work in teams to create an advertising pitch for Henrico County and pitch it to the company. You are trying to convince a new company to relocate their business to somewhere within the boundaries of Henrico County.”

WRITING: Fifth grade started POWER WRITING! This is a quick writing technique to get students used to writing about a random topic. This will be beneficial for all students, but it will also help us prepare for the IB writing assessment. I display the topic on the board and students have 3 minutes to write about it. This will build their stamina and creative thinking. We are trying to avoid the “I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO WRITE” issue. Fourth grade is working on a personal narrative. Each student chose a small seed moment to write about. We discussed how focusing on a small moment in their life will help us include more details to describe it instead of trying to summarize a lot of events. Fifth grade will start these next week!

• November 11-15: SCA HAT, GLOVE, COAT DRIVE! Please drop notifications in the box by the front office. All donations must be new*
• November 12th: Spanish Lesson
• November 13th: READING 9 WEEK ASSESSMENT* (4th and 5th)
• November 14th : Veteran’s Day Performance (8:00- school wide; 6:00 pm families invited to join)!
• November 15th: Jamestown Test Friday! Students should bring home Virginia Studies Notebooks to study next week each night! They have study guides glued in. You may also visit SOLPASS.org and click VS3!
• November 20: Report Cards come home. Please return signed envelopes.
• November 22: PICTURE MAKEUP AND RETAKES

Please wear blue “PAWsome” shirts on Monday!!

MONDAY: STEAM DAY! We learned about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch (and other trash gyres/vortexes like it). Here is a link to some information we looked at together. We discussed the causes of this problem and what things we could do to help fix it. We decided that we should start with a focus in our own community so we are going to spend the rest of the year with a focus on reducing plastic waste and encouraging others to do the same. We made self portraits made out of recycled materials that reflected how the learning about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch made us feel.

TUESDAY: We built Spooky circuits with our Innovative Learning Coach, Ms. Capano, had our weekly Spanish lesson, and finished up our self portraits!! In Spanish we learned the colors!

WEDNESDAY: Wednesday we had so much fun at the BIG BLAST! Students played games, won prizes, and had a great time on the bounce houses! We also started a readers theater called Harvest moon that we used to focus on fluency and reading with expression as well as using context clues to determine the meaning of unknown words.

THURSDAY: Fourth grade learned about the charters granted by King James I to establish Jamestown. Students will bring home notebooks next week to begin studying for our VS3 test. The VS3 Test will be the week of November 11th (exact date to come after we see how much we get done this week)! Fifth grade focused on the different magisterial districts in Henrico County and the difference between education in Henrico back then versus today. They also got to design a flag/shield for the district of their choice.

FRIDAY: We spent today putting the finishing touches on our Student Led Conference presentations. Students worked hard to share their thoughts about each subject as well as do a personal reflection. They are excited to share with you. If you did not have a chance to sign up for a conference on this date, we will contact you to set something up in the next few weeks.

• November 4th: PAW Achievement- be sure to send in the permission slip. We will be taking going to play a kickball tournament with Greenwood Elementary School. Conference Night from 3-8 pm your child and I are looking forward to sharing their growth and setting goals together. (This is also the last day in the first nine weeks) Book fair will be open during conference night.
• November 5th- No School: Election Day
• November 6- spirit night at Chipotle on Staples Mill from 4-8 pm.
• November 18th- half day STEAM day and classroom awards
• November 20th- Report Cards go home
• November 22nd- Make up Picture Day
• November 27-December 1st: Thanksgiving Break

We had a really fun week!

In writing, we wrapped up publishing of our first piece! Most students chose to write a new ending to a classic fairy tale. Some decided to rewrite this story from a different character’s point of view. This led to some awesome discussions about point of view. We spent the last few days working on revising and editing. We each worked on an editing checklist and discussed how we could make our writing better. One goal for each student was to include at least one simile or metaphor in their writing. A printed copy of each story will come home next week so you can see!

In reading, fourth grade finished Wishtree! This ended up being a really special book with a great message. Students worked to determine the theme of this text and supported it with text evidence! We also started our study of nonfiction text with a musical books. Students got to explore different nonfiction texts around the room. We also read a fun piece about Monopoly! Ask your student what they learned from this discussion. Fifth grade continues to read Because of Mr. Terrupt while talking about summarizing and point of view. We discussed the difference between a story told by a narrator and a character in that story.

In VA STUDIES we started learning about Jamestown! We did an Escape Room today. Ask your child how it went for them. Some still need to “escape” on Tuesday! Fifth grade social studies continued working on our in class project. We each picked a topic to research and share with the class. Click here for more information (Henrico Awareness Project using Henrico County Booklet) but students should not have to worry about working on this at home unless they want to!

• STEAM DAY MONDAY! THIS IS A HALF DAY!! Dismissal will begin at 10:55. If you would like to join us to work on our projects, plan to come around 8:45!! We will have resource on Monday morning from 8:00-8:40. 
• It is also the last day to order a Papa John’s pizza to support our school at Book or Treat! Order here: www.pjcheese.com/mtes. You will pick up at the school on Tuesday October 29^th between 6:00-8:00 pm. This fund raiser is to help us keep our BrainPop subscription!
• Sign up for Breakfast with the Principal October 25. Sign up here.
• On Tuesday, 10/29, our class will celebrate the season with Halloween Paper Circuits!  Students will apply their knowledge of electric circuits to make spooky drawings light up!  We are seeking donations of:
  – Conductive copper tape (example from Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/y5h4nuzk)
  Both are available Prime from Amazon but brand does not matter if you happen to be at the store and see them.  Please contact us if you are able to send either item in!   Thank you!
• CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR A STUDENT LED CONFERENCE on November 4^th from 3:00-8:00 pm.

I will be out on Friday, so I am posting my weekly blog update a little early to make sure I don’t forget any important information!

In reading this week, we focused on summarizing! We reviewed the 5Ws (who, what, when, where, why) and SWBST. Ask your student to explain one of these strategies to you and then tell you the summary to the chapter we read in our Read Aloud that day. On Thursday, both fourth and fifth took our 4.5 Week Assessment! Students read a passage and worked to apply the skills we have been learning. This works as a great teaching tool to see if students need to be retaught any material before moving forward.

In writing, we are working on revising. We are also incorporating Stand Up To Bullies week into our writing and writing some poems to inspire others to be kind and to be upstanders instead of bystanders. I love the heart these kids put into their writing! They also chose different types of poems that we talked about in our poetry unit at the beginning of the year. Some chose haikus while others chose acrostic or shape. Please ask them to share their poems when they get to bring them home later this month!

In VA Studies we wrapped up our VS2 assessment on Wednesday! HOORAY! We are moving on to JAMESTOWN! Students are really excited about this, and I AM TOO! Fifth grade social studies has an opportunity for an in-class project. We each picked a topic to research and share with the class. Click here for more information (Henrico Awareness Project using Henrico County Booklet) but students should not have to worry about working on this at home unless they want to!

Spanish

This week in Spanish students learned about the letters in the spanish alphabet. They learned how here are 4 extra letters! Ch, rr, ll, and n. 

Lastly, on Tuesday we got to see an awesome performance of Swan Lake. It was a great experience for the kids, and I hope they enjoyed it as much as I did!

• October 22nd– 4th Grade Math Checkpoint
  • Decimals: Comparing, Ordering, Adding and Subtracting
• October 22- Take a stand against bullying… Mix It Up Day
• October 23rd-Wear orange for Unity Day
• October 24 is the final day to order a Papa John’s pizza for Book or Treat. Order here: www.pjcheese.com/mtes
• Sign up for Breakfast with the Principal October 25. Sign up here.
• October 25th — Word Trek Lesson 2 vocab quiz (4th/5th). See Word Trek Tab at top of blog!
• October 28th- Half Day
• October 29th- Book or Treat
• November 4th – FALL CONFERENCE NIGHT — 3:00 – 8:00 PM! These are STUDENT LED this year so please bring your child 🙂