Upcoming Field trip:  Our class will be going to DeGraaf Nature Center on Thursday, Feb. 5 8:45-10:45 to learn about Michigan Native Americans.  We will be spending much of our time outdoors so make sure your child is dressed warmly.  Thank you to Kerri deVries, Pam Scholten, and Sonya Snyder for your willingness to help on this field trip.

As we dig into our world of nonfiction, we can not read or study these topics without seeing Jesus.  I am reminded of this verse:

Revelation 4:11

"You are worthy , our Lord and God, 
to receive glory and honor and power,
for you created all things, 
and by your will they were created and
have their being."

Throughout our nonfiction reading and writing units, we will study each topic through our Christian lens and see how POWERFUL and AMAZING our Lord is.  

Reading and Writing:
This week in reading we worked mainly on reading sections of nonfiction to identify the main idea and supporting details.  This can be very difficult to do but by Friday, I would say that they all have it mastered.  They are LOVING the nonfiction unit.  Next week will be learning more strategies for how to examine different text structures in nonfiction and how to organize the information we read about.  This will all be leading up to our animal research projects which they are so excited to get started with.

Our writing right now is integrated within our reading and will culminate by your child writing an informational book on a chosen animal.

Math:  We continued to add three digit numbers this week.  The students are reading their story problems carefully and lining up the place value columns correctly in order to compute the sum.  I am so proud of how hard they worked this week.  We celebrated by playing a math addition game on Friday with Mrs. DeZwaan’s class where we even added into the thousands!

Bible:  We looked at how Jacob was tricked by his Uncle Laban when he gave Leah in marriage instead of Rachael.  In past lessons we have seen Jacob as a bit of a deceiver, but this time the tables were turned on him.  The class discussions about this were awesome this week and we continue to see God’s plan unfolding in this story.  We also looked the 12 sons of Jacob and we can predict how God will use some of them in His salvation plan. 

Science:  We continued our unit Organisms Have Character by looking at physical characteristics, habitats, behaviors and defenses of the beetle and crayfish. Students have taken many notes about these creatures and are busy organizing their notes into the appropriate categories.  Next week we will take these organized planners and use our ipads to produce a final project on one of the creatures.  Stay tuned for the awesome results!

Discovery Test:  We will be administering the DISCOVERY test to our class again this coming week.  The Math portion will be given on Tuesday morning and the Reading portion on Wednesday morning. 

Reminders:

·            Our Wacky Wednesday is hat day this coming week.

·            Our new Bible Memory is John 3:16-17.  This is due by February 6.

·            Reading Minutes are due on Monday.

·            Discovery tests will be given on Tuesday (Math assessment)              

       and Wednesday (Reading assessment) morning.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Wyma & Mrs. Stielstra

January 24, 2015

What a great week of learning!  We have begun a new unit in Science that looks at different habitats, we are reading nonfiction texts during Reading Workshop, and practicing multi-digit addition in Math.  Here are just a few pictures of our week.  Feel free to check out many more on our Smugmug site.

READING:  

This week we started our "Reading nonfiction with POWER" Unit and your children have LOVED it.  Nonfiction is naturally very engaging for children. However, reading nonfiction reading requires something very different than just opening the cover and start reading.  This week we have learned that you need to REV up your brain by doing several pre-reading strategies such as previewing text features, making predictions, activating our prior knowledge and then we READ WITH POWER and write down what we have learned.  Your children have done a WONDERFUL job with this.  These reading skills and strategies are also being reinforced throughout our current science unit.  The integration of reading and writing into other content areas is where powerful and lasting learning takes place.

WRITING:

For the next several weeks, we will not be writing during a separate writing workshop time.  Instead, we are doing a lot of writing and gathering information during our reading unit.  Then we will APPLY everything we have learned about reading nonfiction to writing our own information book and an animal of our choice.  This is  very fun and comprehensive project.

SPELLING:

This next week, we will get back to word sorts but I will be starting to alternate those sorts with high frequency words lists like we did this past week.

READING MINUTES:

Please continue to have your children read at home.  Research shows that the biggest indicator of reading growth is how much time your children are actively reading within their appropriate developmental level.  

Math:  We continue to make drawings to understand place value of the ones, tens, hundreds and thousands place.  These drawings help us when we need to round to the nearest ten or hundred.  We also began multi-digit addition.  Student need to be able to prove their answer is correct by making a drawing that shows the answer with the correct place values.  This is a new concept and one that we will continue to work on next week.

 

Bible:  We have been looking at the life of Jacob in class this week.  We focused specifically on Jacob at Bethel and Jacob at the well and his meeting of Rachel.  We see how Jacob is often deceitful but yet God is forgiving and has a sovereign plan for Jacob’s life and our lives as well.

Social Studies:  We continue to look at Michigan’s economy and how we all enjoy different goods and services that are made in our State.  This coming week we will go shopping at the fourth grade Market Day where all of the fourth graders have each made different goods to buy.  There will be limited items that we can shop for so we will have a scarcity issue and be forced to choose our opportunity cost.

Science:  We have begun a new unit called Organisms Have Character.  We looked this week at different plants and made predictions as to where the plant would best grow.  We then created a woodland and freshwater habitat.  On Friday we read, observed, and watched two videos on the bess beetle and crayfish.  We will continue to observe this coming week how God created these creatures for their specific habitat. 

Upcoming Field trip:  Our class will be going to DeGraaf Nature Center on Thursday, February 5 from 8:45-10:45 to learn about Michigan Native Americans.  I would love to have three parent volunteers accompany us on this fieldtrip.  If you are interested, please email Lynae at lstielstra@hollandchristian.org.  Thank you!

Reminders:

Report cards came home on Friday.  Please return the large envelope so we can reuse them again in the spring. 

 Our Wacky Wednesday is pajama day this coming week.

The I AMS for Bible Memory are due on January 30.

Reading Minutes are due on Monday.

Market Day is Wednesday, January 28.  Students may bring $2-$3 to spend on products made by the fourth graders along with a bag to bring their items home.  Our class is EXCITED to shop and already talking about the items they may want to make next year when they are in fourth grade.  :)

A note from Mrs. Boer:

It is time! We are about ready to start recorders in music class. Your child will need a soprano recorder. If you don't have one for your child, you may purchase one in the office for $5. Your child can bring the money to Mrs. Norman and she will give you one. Be sure to write your child's name on the case in permanent marker in case it gets misplaced.

Also, I'd like to welcome Mrs. Sinnema to our class. She is filling in for me while I recover from a broken pelvis and torn rotator cuff from a fall that I had before Christmas. I hope to return to the classroom mid-February.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Lynae and Erin

It was wonderful to have a full week back at school.  The students were ready to learn and we accomplished a lot of material this week.  Along with our learning we also had a several fun events.  On Tuesday several ninth graders came our classroom to read their storybooks that they created in their History class for a final project.  The high school students did a wonderful job of relating to the third graders and our students loved hearing them read.  On Friday we also had a lot of fun playing a Math money game in the morning with Mrs. DeZwaan’s class and then having our writing celebration with them in the afternoon.  There are several pictures posted on the Smugmug site in the January folder if you want to check it out. It was a very busy but fun week.  

Here are more details about our academics:

Reading: The past several weeks we have changed things up a bit from our normal reading workshop routine and we decided to have some fun with a fairy tale unit. Your children did a wonderful job identifying the elements of fairy tales as well as recounting the story by identifying the beginning, middle, and end.  We also learned about point of view and that we often have different points of view about what really happened.  We read several different versions of traditional fairy tales and looked at the stories from the point of view of other characters in the story.

Next week we start our reading unit on Nonfiction.

Writing: We have finished our 2nd personal narrative and the children did such an amazing job with this.  We worked very hard on making them more powerful than the first one we wrote back in September.  On Friday we celebrated by sharing our writing with friends from Mrs. DeZwaan's class.  Here are some pictures from that:

Math:  We have been working diligently with place value this week, especially by making drawings to ensure we understand the ones, tens, hundreds, and thousands.  As we move forward into multi-digit addition and subtraction understanding these drawings will be crucial.  We also focused on rounding to the nearest hundred.  I did assess the students on their math facts for addition, subtraction, and multiplication facts as well.  The students are making huge gains in their computation of their facts!

Bible:  We have been learning about Isaac, Rebekah, and their sons this week.  We studied the chapters in the Bible where Jacob and Esau were born, how Esau sold his birthright for a bowl of stew, and how Jacob tricked his father into giving him the blessing meant for Esau.  The students engaged in great conversation about how lies and deceit can ruin relationships.  We are seeing how God’s covenant promises are going to continue through Jacob.  

Social Studies:  We have been learning about the economy of Michigan.  We studied natural, human and capital resources and how they are used to produce goods and services.  We also learned about entrepreneurs like Henry Ford and focused on terms like scarcity and opportunity cost.

Reminders:

·            No School on Monday due to Records Day.

·            Our Wacky Wednesday is wacky hair day this coming week.

·            Report Cards will come home on Friday.  Please return the large envelope they are sent home in so we can reuse them again. 

·            The I AMS are due on January 30.

·            Reading Minutes are due on Monday.

Have a wonderful weekend--Mrs. Wyma and Mrs. Stielstra