Weekly Newsletter Jan. 21 - 25, 2019

Grade 4

Weekly Newsletter

January 21 - January 25, 2019

Language Arts
In Reading this week we are completing our units on realistic fiction. Students are completing reading their Book Club realistic fiction stories, using thinkmarks to identify important & surprising parts.
In writing this week we are completing peer editing in CUPS (Capitalization, Usage, Punctuation & Spelling, as well as revising with ARMS (Add sentences and words, Remove unneeded sentences and words, Move a sentence or word placement and Substitute words or sentences for others). By the end of the week we will begin our post-assessment. Students will need a new story idea for that task.

Math
This week we begin our unit on equivalent fractions. They will learn how to model fractions correctly and will also learn that fractions of different sizes are not equivalent.

Science
This week students will continue being Geologist and making inferences about changes in rock formations over time through digital simulations.  Students will also be reading some non-fiction books on rocks and fossils to help deepen their understanding.

Announcements

• January 25th: FREE Dress day -  If your child chooses to not wear their uniform they can make their 5 RM donation to one of the Red Hats
• Camp Lost Property - There are some leftover items from camp that have been forgotten by students. Please remind your child to check the table in the grade four common area for lost or missing items.
• Water Bottles & Hats - Please check that your child comes to school with their water bottles and hats every morning. Recently, many students seem to be forgetting them at home.

Resources
Here is a video  explaining a game called Race To 1 that you can create at home to help reinforce the concept of fractions. It is a game primarily for teaching addition and subtraction of fractions but it can be modified to simply build fractions and conceptual understanding.

Here is a website resource, The Math Learning Center, where students can build and manipulate fractions. Open the link and select fractions. When building fractions we encourage only using rectangles as it will reinforce what we are doing in the classroom.