This week most of the fourth grade classes will visit Westcave Preserve. Mr. Miller's class goes tomorrow. Mrs. Young's and my class will go on Friday. This is a wonderful field trip.. Luckily we are in for incredible weather. This makes for a rewarding experience.
Today, all students were expected to come in with their rough drafts of their narratives with their final copies stapled on top. I am missing about 6 out of the three classes. Please check your child's agenda to see if there is a reminder note about the narrative. If you are unsure of what this assignment was, please see my last Weebly entry in the Archives on the right side of this page.
Please see the Upcoming Dates page for some new additions, especially regarding Mrs. Young's last day! She has done an amazing amount of work for your kiddos. She's done all the mandatory assessments, entered scores, filled out conference forms and report cards, held conferences and gone to about a bazillion meetings. I've never seen a substitute do SO much work! I hope you'll take a minute to let her know how much you appreciate what she's done. She will be missed, so be prepared for the adjustment emotionally though from your kiddos. They have really made connections with her, and I know they will miss her.
Mrs. Burke returns on October 20th!!! I know she is so excited to get in here and take over the reigns. She will be here some this Thursday to get to meet the kids and see where they are in their math lessons so the transition will be a smooth one. She and Mrs. Young have very similar teaching styles, so I'm sure the kids will adjust quickly. They will love Mrs. Burke just as much as Mrs. Young.
We are working on our writing stations this week in class. Students are engaged in editing practice, a station called mentor sentences which requires the students to analyze a sentence, notice the parts of speech, patterns, figurative language, etc. They also revise the sentence and take a short editing quiz (5-10 questions) on the skills applied. It's new to them and quite challenging. You will see a lot of growth throughout the year. Another station is letter writing, which you've probably heard them talk about, and finally, the teacher station. At the teacher station, I get the opportunity to work in a small group with kids on a variety of skills. This week, I'm introducing expository writing. We are looking at examples and figuring out how the graphic organizer was used to write the piece.
In social studies, we are continuing our study of Native Americans through reading and notetaking. We will use those notes to ask and answer some pretty high level questions (some from me and some from students). I'm also working on finishing up the next extension for kids to do outside of school. It is mandatory for students identified as GT, but optional for all others. It counts as an extra grade which really bumps up the students' averages. GT students may be given tutorial time to work on their projects as well. Be on the lookout next week for the new extension project, right here in this blog!