October 30, 2014

I'm looking forward to seeing everyone at conferences on Sunday! Conferences will last for ten minutes, and we'll go over your child's report card and progress in fourth grade so far. Since this is a large class, I am meeting with a lot of people that Sunday, especially between 8:00-11:00. Thank you in advance for being on time. Don't forget we turn our clocks back an hour that night, too.

I know everyone is excited about Halloween! Students are welcome to wear costumes to school tomorrow. If they have a mask, they cannot wear it while we're in the classroom, but can bring it to the Halloween Fun Fair. During the Fun Fair, students will receive some free tickets. Additional tickets can be purchased for 25 cents each. We'll also visit the book fair tomorrow if students would like to bring money for books.

Mr. Bennett has also asked the teachers to pass along the message about parking that was originally in last week's Tuesday letter. Please be sure not to double park, as this can be dangerous and cars do get ticketed. There is usually parking farther south on Whipple (which is the street by the door we leave from) or on the other side of Palmer Square.

The students' ofrendas look great! I'm going to leave them in the hallway until next week so that everyone can see them after conferences this weekend. I've also been very impressed with all the information students learned about their family members and how well they wrote about them. We presented about half of our projects today, and we will share the rest tomorrow. All of the students were very attentive and asked great questions during the presentations.

We finished our guided reading books last week. As a final project, students created their own Amazon listings on a poster, including a summary, review, and similar books they would recommend. I passed out our next book, The Bad Beginning, yesterday. We'll read this one as a whole class. It is the first in a series of 13 books, and I'd be happy to let anyone borrow the next book in the series if they've finished this one.

The students seemed to have learned a lot about the economy! They had very creative and well-thought out business plans. I mailed their poster contest entries, so we'll cross our fingers that we have some winners this year, too! In the last two weeks, we've been learning about government, including the difference between local, state, and national governments and the three different branches. We'll have a quiz next Friday on this topic.

In math, we're learning to multiply by two digit numbers and divide three digit numbers by one digit numbers. Many of the students have already gotten the hang of this, but some could use extra help! Please make sure they're looking back at their notes in their notebooks while they complete their homework, and let me know if you see them struggling at home, too.

Finally, in science, we just completed a unit on how the Earth is shaped. We studied mountains, earthquakes, erosion, weathering, and fossils. We also looked at landforms on other planets and how they are similar to Earth. We combined this activity with art by drawing pictures in pastels of other planets. Now, we're studying ecosystems and how energy flows throughout it. We began by observing all the living and non-living things in the ecosystem outside our school. You can see pictures from both of these activities below!