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 :)