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