Dancing Into December!

I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving! I know my husband and I had a great time. We started off our turkey day with a VERY chilly 5k, and I was proud to be wearing some Independence Bulldog gear as I accomplished the feat of the cold turkey trot! After that, we spent time with both of our families, and really reflected on what we were thankful for. Time and time again, I mentioned how thankful I was to have a great class of 4^th graders. Even though I enjoyed break, I missed spending time with our class. It blows my mind to think that we are officially into December and the 2^nd trimester. We have had great experiences so far, and I can’t see what else will happen. J

Peek at the Week

Math In math this week, we will be working on a few different things. We will start our week off working with deciding when it is appropriate to estimate sums of numbers, as well as practicing estimation of these sums. Tuesday, we will spend time practicing our skills through different Everyday math games and small group work. Wednesday will be like Monday, but this time we will be moving from estimating sums in addition to estimating products in multiplication. Thursday and Friday we will focus on partial product multiplication. I am expecting this to be more difficult, and will be posting some helpful hints and tips on the blog.

Social Studies In social studies this week, we will continue to work in the historical fiction genre. We have been working with different books that focus on life on the Great Plains. This will transition nicely into our North Dakota studies. J

Writing We will continue to work on personal narratives this week, but will also spend the beginning of our writing time learning about 2 different elements of writing. Monday through Wednesday, we will focus on similes.  On Thursday and Friday we will review and practice homophones, especially playing attention to their, there, they’re as well as to, too, and two.

Word Study In work study this week, we will be working with ambiguous vowels. This includes words that include these sounds: oy/oi/ou/ow

Reading In reading this week, we will continue to work on the connect to text strategy, focusing mainly on finding text to text connections. Throughout the week, we will be doing this with nonfiction articles. The two articles will be on the same subject, so we will be able to make connections between the two texts, as well as gaining more information on the topic.

Daily 5 This week in my class, as well as Mrs. Steinbrink’s class, we are going to try a new system for Daily 5. I will still meet with small groups during the Daily 5 time, so that aspect will not be different. The work being done during the Daily 5 time not in groups will be different however. We are going to give our students a little more freedom in this time. On Monday, I will be giving the whole class a set of items they need to complete during the week during our Daily 5 time. This will allow students to choose the order of our items that need to be completed. We are going to test this system out this week, and will adjust if it does not work as well.

Terrific Tidbits

~Continue to use all of the sites I have previously listed. J

~In addition to this, make sure you check the blog throughout the week. I will be posted more math help this week since our math unit will be diving into a few different types of multiplication.

Need to Knows

~ We have library this Tuesday. Make sure you bring all of your books back. So far, we have been the only 4^th grade class to accomplish the goal of having no late books. This happened once in October, and I would love for this to happen again on Tuesday.

~ Wednesday, we will have our next counselor lesson. I have really enjoyed our lessons so far, and they have taught our students so much!

~Trimester 1 report cards will be coming home on Friday of this week. Make sure to check your child’s folder on Friday. If they do not have it, let me know! Feel free to send me an email at lnelsen@west-fargo.k12.nd.us  I will send an extra copy to make sure you do get it.

~Now that we are into December, it is so important to make suer your child has warm winter gear on! Make sure they bring hats, mittens, scarves, etc. every day so they can stay warm during recess.

~Tuesday, our class will have a sub for 1 hour as I observe another teacher in our school. The primary part of that hour will be library checkout time.

I hope you have a fabulous week! Let me know if you have any questions!

~ Mrs. Becklund :) 

Perfect Pajama Day

We had a great time with pajama day this week. It was fun to have a cozy, but very productive day. We even won Buster the Bulldog! Enjoy this picture of two of our friends, with their pals from home, working on summarizing, 

Buster decided to take a selfie on this day. Here is a nice close-up of our good pal.

It's the end of November!

Wow! The time is flying! This week and the next 2 days of next week complete November. It also marks the end of the first trimester. It blows my mind to think that our year is close to a third of the way over. I look forward to the rest of our year, and next week. :) Read on to find out what we are doing this week and next week. Let me know if you have any questions.

Peek at the Week

This week, and our very short week next week, I am excited to work on new concepts and skills as well as reviewing previously learned skills. Here is a breakdown of what our week will look like.

Math: This week in math, we will be finishing unit 4. This until really focused on decimals. We will be taking our unit 4 test this week. Starting Friday, and going in to next Monday and Tuesday, our focus will shift to unit 5, which works with computation through multiplication and estimating.

Social Studies: Our time in Social Studies this week might look a little different. It will be a combination of social studies and language arts. We are going to start looking at pieces of Historical Fiction. We will first start by reading Sarah, Plain and Tall  by Patricia MacLachlan, and then read Skylark, also by MacLachlan.

Comprehension: We will continue to work with the text connection strategy this week. We will also spend some time continuing to work on the summarizing strategy, and will have a summarizing assessment this week during our small group time.

Word Study: This week in Word Study we will focus on long and short u sounds in accented syllables. WE have been doing such a great job in Word Study lately! Keep up the great work!

Need to Knows

-We have our music performance this Thursday at 8:30. 4^th grade has been asked to wear red, white, and blue for the concert. We really hope you can make it! Our class has really worked hard on their songs, and I am so excited to watch them perform. We hope you can all make it!

-We have library this week on Wednesday. Remember to bring your books.

-Book orders are due next Tuesday, November 25^th. You can order online or send your order in.

-This week we are going to start something called bucket filling. In our class, it lets us focus on building each other up by sharing kind words about each other. If you have any questions about bucket filling, you can check out this website, http://bucketfillers101.com/faqs.php , or email me or Mrs. Dorrheim, our school counselor.

Terrific Tidbits

I do not have any new websites this week. All of the websites I have recommended can be found on previous posts.

 

 

Let me know if you have any questions, and have a fabulous week! I hope to see you at the concert on Thursday!

 

-Mrs. Becklund

State Summaries

We have had a lot of practice with summarizing these past few weeks. Last week, we presented state summary projects. I wish I could have gotten all of our great posters to fit in this picture, but wanted to show you what our school has the privilege to look at each day right outside of the he silver wing.

Buster Strikes Again

All of 4th grade has really done well following the bulldog way at lunch! We have managed to earn Buster two more times since our last post about Buster. I wanted to share this accomplishment with you, as well as a picture of one of our friends with Buster. (We were having some funny making silly camera faces with him!) 

Classroom Update

Good evening 4^th graders and family members!

I hope you had a fabulous weekend. I am so sorry that I wasn’t able to post last week. I was out of town for the weekend, and got back much later than I thought I would. Hopefully that will be the only time that happens.

Here is our look at our week. Like always, if you have any questions whatsoever, please feel free to email me at lnelsen@west-fargo.k12.nd.us

Peek at the Week

Specials this Week:

Monday – Art and Health

Tuesday – NO SCHOOL

Wednesday – Library Skills and PE

Thursday – Music and PE

Friday – Music and PE

Math: This week we will continue working with decimals. At the end of the week, our focus will shift to dealing with metric units of length. I am excited for the hands on activities that will accompany this.

Reading: We are working on a new reading strategy this week! We are going to start talking about connecting to text. Our first stage of connecting to text is seeing how we can connect texts that we are reading to experiences that we have in our life. We do this to help us build our understanding of what we are reading, to predict what might happen, to empathize with characters, and so much more! Eventually we will also work on connecting different texts and text to the world/media/etc. Even though we are working a new strategy, we will still continue to work on our summarizing strategy in small groups. In Word Study, we will start working on long and short o patterns in accented syllables.

Writing: In writing this week, we will continue to work on building the paragraph. Our class has gotten pretty great at identifying weak paragraphs in writing. From this, we have also grown in being able to take those weak paragraphs and transform them into strong paragraphs that are more exciting to read. We will also continue to work on writing our personal narratives.

Science: Measuring temperature will continue to be our main focus in science this week. Once we finish this measurement investigation, we will have the opportunity to read some really great science articles to practice our summarizing with. J

Need to Knows:

~We have library on Monday, November 10.

~Our next counselor  lesson will take place on Wednesday of this week.

~On Monday we will have a fun guest speaker. My husband, Scott, is coming into our class for about 20 minutes to talk about Veteran’s day. He is really nervous about coming to speak, but I know that our class is so excited to hear from him.

Terrific Tidbits:

I do not have any extra resources for you this week. Feel free to browse previous blog posts for links. 

Remember to keep checking the blog and your email as the week goes on! 

~Mrs. Becklund :)