Devices, Balance Balls, and Coats, OH MY!

I wanted to send out a few notes to parents to let you know about a few options your kiddos have here at school. If you have any questions, please contact us at any time. Thanks!

Devices-- Your child is allowed to bring a device to school, but it is definitely not a requirement. It can be a phone, tablet, or Chromebook. We use a few different apps and sites during the day that they can access on a device with our school wifi, rather than using one of our Chromebooks, which we only have a limited amount to share. We often use Kahoot! (quiz game to introduce and review information), Google Drive, and Google Classroom. Whatever they bring, it must stay in their bookbag until they are given permission to use it. We also will not be responsible for lost, stolen, or broken devices. 

Balance Balls-- If they choose to bring in their own balance ball, they are more than welcome. This will be used in place of a traditional chair. 65 cm seems to work best, if you shop around for them. We've discovered that as the 55 cm lose air, they become a little too short for the desks.You can find them at just about any store, but you can also sometimes find used ones at a reasonable price at Goodwill. You can deflate them and we will air them back up here at school.

Coats-- We have a district-wide cold weather recess policy that states that students can go outside if the temperature is at least above 25 degrees. If the temperature hits 25 or below, we will stay inside. This is the time of year when the weather shifts, and students aren't bringing a warm enough (winter) coat to school with them, preventing them from going outside for recess. We go to recess at 11:45. Often, the temps are still low enough at that time of day that winter coats are needed, even if the high of the day is predicted to be above 49. If you need assistance in getting a coat for your child, please let us know. We completely understand and would love to help. Today was only 37 when we went out and we had several kiddos with only a sweatshirt. Thanks for all of your help! :)

Fourth Grade Updates

Happy Thanksgiving Week, families!

We cannot believe how quickly this school year is zipping  by us. We've been working so hard in language arts to expand our skills and apply what we already know.

In language arts, we've been working to build our comprehension skills and metacognitive strategies. We've focused on visualizing, making inferences, making connections, determining important information, asking questions as we read, sequencing, and expanding our vocabulary by making sense of the words as we read them. We've been focused on becoming stronger writers, with a major focus on conventions (punctuation, capitalization, etc.) and organization. We are expecting students to annotate as they read, show evidence of finding their answers in the texts that we read, and answering open response questions COMPLETELY with details/evidence from the text.
We will not have a new word study list until after Thanksgiving. New lists will be sent home on Monday, November 28th, and the test will be on December 9th.

NWEA testing will be held the week after Thanksgiving Break. We will be testing on Tuesday and Thursday, in the morning and will analyze the data from that testing to drive our instruction next semester. We will also be kicking off a Chris Van Allsburg author study the week we return from Thanksgiving, during FIT. We just finished up working intensively on computation (either addition or multiplication, depending on your child's needs). We will focus on problem/solution, setting, and character traits/development during the three week author study. Chris Van Allsburg has written many books, the most popular ones being Polar Express, Zathura, and Jumanji. He is one of our favorite picture book authors!

READING COUNTS CHALLENGE-- We've challenged the fourth grade to earn 450 Reading Counts points, as a grade level, by December 20th. Each student would need to earn approximately 12 points over a period of three weeks to make this happen. This is doable and EXPECTED for every student to complete. If they do not earn their 12, but the grade level is still able to hit 450 points, they will not get to participate in the reward party at the end of the challenge. WE are thinking jammies, a movie, and a special treat. We hope everyone tries their best and hits those goals!

Thanks for all of your support at home. We appreciate all that you do for your kiddos!

Language Arts Updates

It's been a busy few weeks in the Webb. In fourth grade language arts we just wrapped up chapter 3 of our vocabulary (word study) unit. We tested over the words on Friday, October 28th. I have several students who have been given the option to correct and return. I placed the word study assessments in their data binders and graphed their score. Please make sure your child shows you their data binder weekly. If they choose, they may correct their assessment and return it for an averaged grade. Our new list includes the roots anim, san, and spir.  We will also focus on the prefix in- and the suffix -ary.

We are wrapping up Unit 2 of Benchmarks, and will begin Unit 4 soon. Our focus in Unit 4 will be making inferences and visualizing as we read and/or listen to new text. This is one of my favorite units to teach! 

Just a reminder-- if you haven't filled out the heart with your child's name on it, please do so as soon as possible and send it back into school. We are creating a project using the heart as the center. If you lost your paper heart, please make a new one and send it in as soon as possible. It should have messages from the family, to your child, written on it. Thanks!