I hope you all had a wonderful weekend! Just as a reminder, there is no school for students on Monday, October 8th (it is a staff development day for teachers).
*Important Announcements This Week*
*Jamestown Field Trip: Permission slips went home last week for our Jamestown field trip. Please sign and return the permission slips with payment for your child as soon as possible. The field trip to Jamestown will be on Friday, November 2, 2018. We will leave SPES at exactly 7:30 AM and will return to school around 4:15 PM. Please note that this means your child will NOT be able to take the bus to school that day. You will need to drop your child off, and we are suggesting your child arrive no later than 7:20, so we can account for all children. Thanks for your help with this! The cost of the trip is $33.00. This fee includes the price of the charter buses, a tour of the Jamestown Settlement and a tour of the Historic Jamestown Site and Archaearium.
*Picture Day: Picture day is this Wednesday, October 10th! Information was sent home last week about how to purchase picture packages. Please send in your order form and money on Wednesday.
*SPES “Trunk or Treat”: This year the SPES PTA has decided to host a “Trunk or Treat” event this fall instead of putting on a Fall Festival. The Trunk or Treat will take place on Friday, October 12th from 6-8 pm. Our room parents have contacted everyone to let you know that we need some help with the Trunk or Treat. All families are asked to send in 1-2 bags of candy for the event. Please consider helping out our class with this event. You can send in bags of candy with your child and I will collect them for our class. If you have any questions, please let me or our room parents know.
*Virtual Lesson with Virginia Museum of History & Culture: This week the 4th graders students will take part in our first Virtual Lesson with the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. On Tuesday we will sit in our classroom as we meet virtually with an educator at the museum, located in Richmond. The instructor will use primary sources to help teach our class about the Virginia history. Please ask your child what was specifically shared and what a primary source is. We will take part in one lesson per month until May. Thank you to our wonderful PTA for supporting this program!
*Stinger Fund: Safety continues to be Short Pump ES’s number 1 priority, and this year, we hope that you can support us in this effort as well. Please consider donating to the Stinger Fund, which is comprised of direct donations to support instruction and this year safety as well. We need to raise over at least $15,000 collectively to reach our goal. The way we figure it is if each family in my class donates at least $25, it will cover instructional materials of my classroom that the PTA financially provides each year and allows me to have a walkie talkie, an enhanced security measure. Thank you for your consideration!
*Volunteers: Please be sure to complete the Henrico County Volunteer application that was included in the PTA folder that you received at Open House. This form is required if you would like to be a chaperone on any field trips this year. If you have misplaced that form or need an additional copy, you can find on online version at the website below:
http://henricoschools.us/pdf/Community/VolunteerApplication.pdf
*What Are We Learning This Week?*
*Reading:
This week’s reading skill we will learn about is using text features and text structures in nonfiction. Students did a great job last week working on the strategies we learned called “stop and jot” and “boxes and bullets.” This week, students will learn about 6 different structures that you often find in nonfiction. We will analyze different sample texts and work together to identify which structure was used in the text. Students will also delve deeper into the text as we look at specific features found in nonfiction such as captions, diagrams, subheadings, and bold words. Students will have notes in their notebook. During small group rotations, students will meet with me in small group and we will continue our strategy work using leveled texts with me, participating in “read to self” at their seats, and working on their writing.
In word study, we will continue working with commonly misspelled words during word study. The first lists that your child will receive are not patterned lists like the ones that we will do throughout the year. Instead we like to start with lists of commonly misspelled words that fourth graders should know how to spell. Students will have homework associated with these words throughout the week. On Thursday your child will complete a word study sentences assessment where they will have to use the word correctly in a sentence and spell it correctly. Due to the shortened week, I will give students their Word Study Test on Monday, October 15, instead of this Friday, to allow them extra days to study. Please check in with your child to make sure that they are working on these words throughout the week. Thank you for your support with this.
*Math:
On Tuesday we will review all decimal concepts in preparation for the Decimals Test on Wednesday 10/10. Later in the week, we will begin our next unit which will be on computation of sums and differences. We will begin the unit by reviewing estimation of sums and differences and then next week we will work on sums. Students will also take a pretest to determine if they are already proficient in these skills.
*Social Studies:
We will continue with our unit on Virginia’s Indians this week (VS.2defg notes). Students will take the VS.2d Quiz on the tribes and language groups on Tuesday 10/9. Later in the week we will move on to the last part of our unit, which is about the current day tribes of Virginia and how they live (VS.2g). We have tentatively scheduled the VS.2d-g Indians Test for Wednesday, 10/17. Please encourage your child to review a little bit each night in preparation for the test.
*Science:
This week we will begin our next unit which will be on weather. We will begin the unit by looking at the tools that meteorologists use as they create weather forecasts. Students will learn about several weather tools and what they measure. We will also learn about some of the common cloud types. Students will need to know what the cloud looks like and the weather that is associated with each cloud type. All of this information will be glued into your child’s science notebook.
Have a great week ahead!
-Mrs. Jacobsen