Weekly Update

We had a great week back after a relaxing and refreshing Thanksgiving break. As we approach the Christmas season, we are getting in the spirit with fun holiday activities. Here are some curriculum updates.

Math: We began the week with a fun problem solving project using the movie Sing. The girls chose three EdPuzzles to solve with video clips from the movie. Here is one that most of them solved.

 
The next part of the project involves the girls writing a song with a partner. The challenge is that they are asked to use some Wordly Wise words in their song. They are really into this project and will perform early next week.
We also jumped into fractions and reviewed the concept of a fraction, numerators and denominators, using pictorial representations. We will continue to work with fractions up to the Christmas break.
On this week's Pick 8, the girls had to solve multi-digit addition, subtraction, multiplication and division problems. There were many careless mistakes so I encouraged the girls to look back over their work this week. I will be giving them a pop quiz on this computation next week. It will look very similar to this week's Pick 8.
Another fun math project that we started this week was solving problems to earn "Math-a-ments." Each girl has a Christmas tree on the outside of their cubby. In order to decorate it, they must correctly solve a variety of math problems to earn math-a-ments. Coloring and math make a great combination for 9-10 year old girls! Here is one:

Language Arts: The girls did a nice job reflecting on the blessings in their lives with their gratitude journals. These came home today in their Friday folders so I hope you will take a look. We finished our realistic book projects and they made some awesome book trailers using Animoto. Check them out! We are continuing with our class novel, All of a Kind Family, and I hope we will conclude the book by the break. This week, we started a new writing lab that will last for the next few weeks. It started with a partner interview with girls from Mrs. Coughlan's class. We talked about how to phrase a question to encourage a detailed response. The girls had fun interviewing each other and taking notes. Next week the girls will practice their summarizing skills and write about their partner. There's an additional piece to this activity that will place the girls on the cover of a magazine. Stay tuned.

Reminders and Announcements

• Gifts Service is December 19 - more details to follow
• No carpool helpers from our class next week
• Scavenger hunt

• Please consider participating in the Lower School Christmas Service project. Our class has been asked to bring in gifts for a girl age 15 and up.

 

Happy Thanksgiving!

Reminders

• Carpool helpers for next week are Amelia and Juliet
• Our class will visit the book fair in the library on Wednesday, November 28 from 12:10 - 12:30. Please come meet us there or feel free to send in money with your daughter.
• Scavenger Hunt!!

Weekly Update

On Thursday, we celebrated the girls earning 50 class compliments by bringing in a stuffed animal or a lovey, and visiting the school cafe for an afternoon treat. There was lots of silliness, sugar, and fun on our visit!

The girls have worked so hard this week taking lots of ERB tests! We have two tests left on Monday and then we are finished. They are learning how to take a standardized test and how to take one on a computer. I am proud of them and their hard work and focus during this testing week.

In the midst of testing, we continued reading All of a Kind Family and writing a hashtag to summarize each chapter. We also completed a writing lab where they wrote a procedural paragraph explaining to do something of their choice. We had an open book Wordly Wise quiz yesterday and a short math assessment today on unit 2. Whew! That is a lot of learning and activities in addition to the ERB testing.

To get some fresh air, the girls took pictures around the campus and wrote about something for which they are thankful. The overall theme of gratitude in this class is that the girls are thankful for their friendships. This is a kind group of girls and relatively drama free, which makes me a happy teacher!

Reminders

• Carpool helpers for the next two weeks (because they're both short weeks) are Amelia and Juliet
• Monday is the last day of ERB testing so they may bring slippers to wear for the occasion
• Monday is the last day to bring in canned goods for our LS Outreach project
• On Tuesday, we will visit St. Christopher's for our annual Math Expo and the girls will need to wear their field trip attire
• No homework next week due to ERB's and Thanksgiving break!
• Scavenger Hunt!!

Weekly Update

This week was another great one and it is hard to believe that we have entered the month of November!

Math: The girls did well working with long division this week. We will continue to practice this skill and I will give them an assessment next week. Because we will be taking the ERB tests, I will allow them to use notes and it will be more of a guided assessment. The girls listened to an online tutorial about how to make a bar graph using Google Sheets. They used this to make a bar graph about the candy they collected on Halloween. I was so impressed by their independence with this activity! They listened, listened some more if necessary, and completed their graphs without much assistance. Bravo!

Language Arts: We began our class novel, All of A Kind Family. They seem to be enjoying this story about a Jewish family of five girls at the turn of the 20th century. We are tying this into our decade study and looking at similarities and differences between our lives today and their lives then. I showed the girls how we have the novel recorded and linked on our fourth grade website so that they can listen and read if they choose. We will continue with this novel over the next few weeks. Next week we will have a Wordly Wise quiz and spelling quiz on list 6. Again because of the ERB tests, I will allow them to use more tools to work through the assessments, including their Wordly Wise workbook.

Reminders

• Next week's carpool helpers are Selah, Addisyn, and Claiborne
• ERB Testing will begin next week. Please read this letter with more information. This is our testing schedule and you can see that there is a change from the one I emailed out this week. We will use Monday to work through some practice tests and then start the actual tests on Tuesday. 
• On Tuesday, November 20, we will visit St. Christopher's for our annual Math Expo 
• No homework next week due to ERB's
• Scavenger Hunt

Weekly Update

We had another fun week with lots of extra fun and excitement! On Monday morning, we started the week by having a "Read-in" with our eighth grade big sisters. The girls read a book with their big sister and then we went out to the playground for some outdoor fun.

Halloween was great fun and I was so impressed with the girls' WW costumes. They were original, creative, and fun! Check out everyone's costumes.
In math, we continued to practice multi-digit multiplication and the girls seem to be getting the hang of it. Next week, we will dive into long division and spend lots of time practicing this skill. In this week's papers, I am sending home a report from the website That Quiz. This is the site I use to assess the girls on their facts knowledge. The report is helpful because it shows the particular facts that they frequently miss. I went over this with them and encouraged them to look at the facts they frequently miss so they know which ones to further review. For the most part, the class is doing well on the weekly facts check and their knowledge is transferring to their multi-digit computation. The focus of next week's fact contract will be a mixed review of multiplying by 2 through 9.

For this week's, 3WT (3 Word Thursday), we tried something different. We completed it in class on a collaborative Google Slide document. The girls did well with this and followed my direction of staying on their slide. They presented their writing to the class today, which helped them catch small mistakes they have made in their writing. Here it is!
We also started a gratitude journal for the month of November. Each school day, they will write something for which they are thankful. It is important to slow down and focus on our blessings so this is a way to help with this.

Reminders and On the Horizon

• Next week's carpool helpers are Vivienne and Emily
• Student Holiday on Monday, November 5
• Candy tally chart due on Tuesday
• ERB Testing will be the week of November 12 - 16
• Scavenger Hunt