We are fully into our second nine weeks. This is just a reminder that when you see low grades on the parent portal, ask your child about them. We generally send graded work on Fridays in the Cardinal folder. Any failing grade can ALWAYS be corrected and returned for a higher grade. If you see "MSG" under an assignment column, it means that for now it has not been turned in. It averages in as a zero until the assignment is added. Your child should be showing his/her agenda each day so that you can see what we are working on. Homework should be recorded and highlighted. If your child is not doing this, he/she is not following the directions and expectations of fourth grade.
In Language Arts we are continuing on our expository pieces. We are really working on catchy beginnings right now. We did more practice on this in the computer lab today. Soon, I will be introducing Google Docs, so that students may work on assignments at home or at school and not lose the progress they've made. This week we are working with words that have suffixes in spelling. Most of our practice is in class. Work only goes home when a student doesn't finish in-class work due to being off task. Any other homework, which I give very little, is documented in the agenda.
In Social Studies we are learning about explorers who came to Texas. You should have recieved an open notes quiz over regions and Native Americans. Students who scored below a 70 were asked to write or type out corrections in complete sentences. Partial corrections or corrections written right onto the paper will not be accepted. Tomorrow, Election Day, we are diverging from explorers to learn about an African American woman from Houston, Christia Adair, who had a hand in working for women's suffrage.
The first benchmarks are next week. Next week will be crazy. School on Monday, students off on Tuesday, benchmarks on Wednesday and Thursday (writing), and then Friday. Ugh! None of us like this time of year. Please don't worry about these first benchmarks. They really are a gauge for us to see what gaps there are in learning before we get too much further into the year.
Have a great week!