fDear Parents, We have an exciting week ahead of us! On Monday we get to take our annual trip to the Musical Instrument Museum, which should be a lot of fun. We will experience the musical contributions of cultures from across the globe. Make sure you remember to pack your student a lunch for the field trip! We are also introducing fractions this week, and that can be a stressful topic for some students. We are going to be working on simplifying the concept and showing them that understanding fractions is actually quite simple. Make sure you keep encouraging them to push themselves hard, and remind them that no concept is beyond their grasp or ability. This WeekIn Spalding we will be finishing list Q and moving into list R in our Spalding blue books. This means harder words, but your students are more than ready. Keep encouraging to practice their Spalding tools at home. In Literature we will be rehearsing our play, Twelfth Night, pretty much every day from now until we perform it! It is Reader's Theater, so your students do not have to memorize lines, but they should work hard to become familiar with them. I will let you know ASAP when the performance date is so you can block out time to come see it. In ELA we will be learning about how to use quotation marks this week. Ask your student about it and see if they can explain when you put a sentence in quotes and when you don't. We will also continue working on keyword outline building. Being able to create a keyword outline is an important skill that will be used on the AZmerit test. In Math we are diving into fractions! They may seem scary, but fractions are actually one of the easiest concepts in math to get. Basically, whenever you break a whole into parts...you can name the parts! That is the only fundamental concept, everything else is a convention. If your students get frustrated, always bring it back to that simple concept and remind them that they are capable. Upcoming Assessments1) Spalding
- Spelling Test on Friday 2) Math - Fractions quiz next Monday (the 19th). Dear Parents, We are officially beginning Twelfth Night this week! Your students will learn a (abridged) Shakespeare play and perform it on stage for the school and for you in a Reader's Theater. They will be practicing every day for the next five weeks, so make sure you are encouraging them to do well! We are also wrapping up a unit in math. They may feel some stress leading up to our test on Thursday, but keep encouraging them. They are ready, some of them just need to be reminded of it. This WeekIn Spalding we are going to be doing 15 words a day this week, since we are going to be missing Friday. Please make sure to dictate your student’s words each night they have homework! It only takes a half hour or so and helps them understand the fundamentals of the English language better every time they practice. In ELA we are going to be practicing fixing broken sentences this week. Students will learn how to identify a bad sentence, and then practice fixing it as a class. This will help develop their ability to create beautiful sentences of their own. We will also be creating key word outlines, which is a key skill in analyzing a piece of literature or an informational text and writing about it. In Mathematics we will be finishing up unit 2 and testing on Thursday! You should help your students by reviewing the four operations with them. Show them how you learned to solve it! There is no wrong method so long as it consistently works. Have them show you how to do the methods they have been learning in school. Get them to explore and experiment. This experience, and reflection on experience, is what will help them cement both concepts and methods. In History we are learning about the Crusades. Ask your student what started the war between Christian Europe and the Muslim Middle East. The period had many long lasting effects, some of which still extend into today. Much of the animosity that can still be found between the Western and Muslim worlds has its roots in this period. That can be something your family discusses if you are comfortable with it. In Science we will be making our own paper circuits! Hopefully the materials all arrive by Thursday, but if not your students will be mapping out the path of their circuits in preparation to get things lit up. They should have a lot of fun and get to experience current electricity firsthand. Upcoming AssessmentsMath
1) Test on Thursday covering the 4 operations. Students are preparing in class and being sent home with work specific to the test. Please email me if you believe your student does not get a key concept regarding one of the four operations. Spalding 1) Spelling test on Thursday Dear Parents, My apologies for not updating this blog last week. In the rush of really getting back into our normal schedule and lessons it slipped my mind. Here we are in the second quarter! Your students have done well and accomplished much in the first nine weeks of school, and they should continue to work with the same effort and determination. The content will indeed get harder, and sometimes you and your student may feel as if the challenge before them is immense, but they have already proven themselves capable. Keep encouraging them to push forward and through frustration to reap the reward of Truth on the other side of every obstacle. This WeekIn Spalding we will be completing rule page 6 in our Spalding Blue book. This dictates the rules of the English language that let us know when to use the "ti", "ci" and "si" phonograms. Be sure to ask your students about what they are learning. In English Language Arts we are going to be practicing reading an informational text and analyzing it for its main idea and supporting points. Ask your students about the reading they are doing on circuit electricity and if they can explain the difference between series and parallel circuits. This is a neat time when their science and writing curriculum intersect. Don't forget to insist on complete sentences! In Mathematics we will be finishing up our unit on word problems then diving into multiplication again. If our curriculum seems circular that is because it is. We will spiral through a lot of the same concepts multiple times in order to give students multiple opportunities to practice and solidify concepts and number sense. In Science we will continue to study the wonders of electricity and how it makes our world function. Make sure you are asking your students to explain how electrons move in a circuit to transfer energy from one place to another. Even if you get it, ask them to draw a picture to help you understand. This will solidify their own understanding of the concepts as they teach you. In History we are moving through a turbulent time of the Middle Ages, the Black Plague. It is a period ravaged by war, disease, famine, and chaos, but it is important for students to learn and understand how the plague dramatically affected the political landscape of Europe. They should be able to explain all about it if you ask. In Literature we are beginning Robin Hood, so make sure your student brings it to school. We will not be reading the whole book, just excerpted chapters, but we will still be able to enjoy many adventures with the worlds most famous and dashing rogue. Upcoming AssessmentsMonday: None
Tuesday -Math quiz on word problems using all four operations. Wednesday - None Thursday -None Friday -Spelling Test on 30 Spalding words for the week. Last week was hard. Especially last Friday. After a whole quarter of learning new things, we are all incredibly excited, but also a little tired. This is why Fall Break was invented. As we approach the break, remind your students to finish the race strong! Push through to the end and cross the finish line at their best pace. These last two weeks contain the promise of wonderful learning yet, and then we will get a week off to rest our minds and our souls and prepare for a brand new quarter. Each and every one of your students deserves a commendation for what they have accomplished these past nine weeks. Be sure to remind them how proud you are during their break! This WeekIn Spalding this week we will be filling in some rule pages, but still expect spalding homework to be coming. In English Language Arts we will be practicing our keyword outline and summary skills. Student progression in these skills will be tested next week. In Math we will continue working on factors and multiples. Factors are numbers that you can multiply together to make a product (another number). Keep reviewing this concept. Ask your students "We are buying 2 pizzas with 8 slices each...2 and 8 are both factors of what number?" Make it as concrete and as relevant as possible so your students have concrete experiences to connect with these ideas with in the future. In Literature we will be learning about Arthur and his knight's quest for the Holy Grail. The story starts to take many a tragic turn in these chapters, but also contains a lot of exciting adventures and excellent moral lessons. Keep asking your students what it means to be a good knight, and who their favorite knight is. They can learn a lot from the examples of King Arthur's court. In History we are reviewing all we have learned this quarter. The important arc we have been tracking is the transition from the Feudal system of government that arose in the wake of Rome's collapse to the beginnings of Representative Democracy that arose in England through the Magna Carta and parliament. The ideas and truths that were discovered in the 400 year period between Charlemagne's crowning as Holy Roman Emperor in 800 A.D. and the signing of the Magna Carta in 1215 A.D. are those that would be held as "Self-Evident" in the American Declaration of Independence. In Science we will be diving into atoms and electricity! This is a very exciting unit, so expect a lot of excited stories to come home about static electricity and circuits! Upcoming Assessments
This WeekIn Spalding we will be jumping to list "P" because your scholars have demonstrated excellence in following the Spalding method to solve words. You should expect Spalding homework to come home on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night. The spelling test will be on Friday. In English Language Arts we will be reviewing all that we have learned about nouns and pronouns and also starting to write our own summaries, but in groups. This week we will be reading and summarizing an informational text about Leonardo Da Vinci. In Mathematics we are diving into the world of multiplication and division. We will be studying factors and multiples throughout the week, but we will have a quiz on Tuesday that only assesses student understanding of rounding and multiples. In Literature we will be reading about the exploits of Sir Gawain and then seminaring on what it is about him that makes him such a great knight. Be sure to ask your students what you think their opinion is and have them answer in complete sentences! In History we will be learning about the Magna Carta and the seeds of democratic government that would spring from it. Ask your students why the Magna Carta was written and why it is so important to the history of our own country. In Science we will be starting our unit on electricity! This is a super exciting unit that will involve a lot of projects. Your students should be bringing a few of those projects home in the coming weeks. Don't forget to ask them to explain to you how electricity works. The greatest gift we can give to our students is to let them, for a moment, be the teachers. Upcoming Assessments1, Math quiz on Tuesday that will go over rounding and finding multiples. 2. History test on Wednesday that will cover everything we have learned from Charlemagne to the Model parliament we will learn about today. 3. Spelling test on Friday on the 30 words we studied this week. 4. Seminar on Sir Gawain this Friday. Other announcementsWe have gone through a slight schedule shift in order to change how we teach science and history. Starting next week science and history will be taught alternatively every other day. In order to make this work we have moved science and history to the end of the day, and brought English Language Arts to the beginning of the day. This will not effect the content level of any of your students' other classes.
-The Battle of Hastings Dear Parents, We are officially more than half way through our first quarter as fourth graders. Even in that short amount of time, I have seen each of your scholars grow in both maturity and knowledge. I am incredibly excited for what this young group of learners will do in the coming weeks and months. The academic expectations of my fourth grade class are not easy, and may even be frustrating for many of your students. This is intentional, I want them to be a little bit frustrated, if only so they can learn to work through that frustration. Too often students breeze through elementary and even high school...only to freeze when they encounter the first difficult challenge that life throws at them as adults. It is better if they learn how to deal with those challenges in 4th grade, when the stakes are relatively low. If your student received a notice of academic deficiency this week, don't panic! There is plenty of time to bring up low grades. Focus on making sure your students are completing the homework coming home in their folders, and encourage them to write down any questions they have to bring to me if they do not understand what they are studying in class. Let me know if you have any questions! Best, Mr. Ohbayashi This Week.In Spalding we should be getting into the swing of our words this week. We will be doing about 10 words a day in list N. Expect Spalding homework to come home on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. In Literature we will be reading about the Knights of the Round Table and some of their most heroic adventures. Be sure to ask about how King Arthur survives the plots of his sister the sorceress Morgana le Fay, or how Gawain survives his encounter with the Green Knight! In Mathematics we are going to be playing with some big numbers, up to 100,000. This can be daunting for students, but remind them that they can think of each place value as its own small group. The digit 7 in the ten thousands place means you have seven ten thousands. Have them draw pictures of their ten thousands, so they can picture it as a real and concrete thing. Each place value is a concrete thing, and the more concretely students think about numbers, the easier they will be able to manipulate them. In History we will be learning about another would be English king, William the Conqueror. We will learn how his conquest in 1066 laid the foundation for much of the history that would eventually lead to the American Revolution. We will also learn about Henry II and his contributions to English law and history. In ELA we will be exploring the Relative Pronoun. Language is a vehicle that transfers and communicates meaning, and the relative pronoun allows us to connect descriptive clauses to nouns. This lets us talk not just about a hand, but a hand "that was burned." Relative pronouns are incredibly important to be able to write elegant and beautiful sentences. We will also continue practicing our summarization skills. Keep having your students orally summarize any story they encounter at home or at the movies! This repeated practice will make them elite summary writers in no time. Upcoming Assessments1. On Tuesday we will have an open note quiz on Nouns and Pronouns. Make sure you review the Personal and Relative pronouns with them Monday night!
2. On Thursday we will have a math test on place value and using operations to manipulate numbers up to 10,000. 3. On Friday we will have a Spalding spelling test and a History test on what we have learned so far in the Middle ages.
This Week.In Spalding we will be continuing in list N and will (finally) begin sending home Spalding homework assignments. These assignments require students to hear words dictated to them and write them down with rules three times. You will have a copy of the words to show them if they are correct or not. You NEED NOT know the rules, and if the students do not remember what rule is what, simply send them to school knowing to ask that question. Students will learn the rules through repeated experience, so you need not try to have them memorize them. In Literature we will be starting King Arthur, by Roger Lancelyn Green. This book will be provided by the school as a class set. They are a bit beat up from previous use, we are trying to make them last one more year so please help your students take care of them. Arthur is a difficult read for many students, and every student would benefit from reading their assignments with a parent. Feel free to help them understand what their focus questions are asking if you notice their answers don't make sense based on the question. In Math we will be learning place value up to 1,000,000. Understanding place value is fundamental to being comfortable with math. The value of the digit in the tens place in the number 245 is not 4, but 4 tens. When students internalize this principle they begin to read numbers much more easily and many simple mistakes are avoided. Insist that your students describe numbers that you encounter in your every day life. Simply asking a question like "It is 110 degrees outside, how many hundreds are there in that number?" will begin to make place value a concrete concept in their minds. In History we will be learning about the birth of the Feudal system and the rise of kings like Charlemagne from the ashes of Rome. Feudalism is the system of government that dominated Europe for the better part of a thousand years, and it was the egg within which ideas about modern liberty and freedom were hatched. Be sure to ask your student about what they are learning in history class, I am sure they will have a lot to teach you. In ELA we will be learning more about pronouns. There are many different kinds of pronouns, who knew that such a simple part of speech could be so diverse? This week we will be learning about personal pronouns. I, she, we, he, they, and you. If you see any of those make sure you have your student identify they! We will also be practicing summarizing and outlining a story that they have read. The skill of summarization is fundamental to learning how to write expository and persuasive essays. Make sure you have your students practice summarizing their days or a movie that they have seen. Always expect them to be able to tell you about main characters and what happened in the story, and make sure they always use complete sentences. This verbal exercise will help improve their skills on written summarizations. Upcoming Assessments1. Pronouns Quiz on Friday (the 8th)
2. Place Value Quiz on Friday (the 8th) 3. Spelling test on Friday (the 8th) We enter our fourth week of learning this Monday, and your students are beginning to become comfortable with the pace and rhythm of the classroom. The expectations they have begun to set for themselves are high, and they are beginning to see the rewards of those expectations. This week your students will begin to learn how to seminar. This is a difficult skill, as it requires not just having something to say, but also begin able to listen to what is being said by others. The best way to help develop their ability to do this is to begin (if you haven't already) to engage them in discussions about things that really matter. Ask for their opinions and show them what it looks like to thoughtfully consider them. The topics of these discussions should of course vary based on what each parent feels is important and appropriate to discuss with their fourth grader, but yours will be their best example of how to engage in fruitful conversation about what is True, and Good, and Beautiful. This Week:In Spalding this week we will be starting list N in the Spalding blue book. Please make sure your students have this book as it is absolutely necessary to the curriculum. If your student is new to Spalding, or just rusty with the phonograms, please be reviewing them for about 10 minutes a night. I am told there is a Spalding Phonograms app that can be found in the app store on i-phones. I am unsure about Android. There will be a spelling test on Friday. In Literature we will be discussing our seminar questions all week and having our Seminar on Friday. Students will be assessed on how well they answer the questions, but also on how well they foster a group conversation. If you want to help them get better at this skill, foster such conversations at home. Teach them what it looks like to listen and respond respectfully to points being made, even if you don't one hundred percent agree with them. In Science we will be finishing our review of the scientific method and conducting our first experiments! We will be looking and experimenting to find how many times you can fold a piece of paper in half and the effect of a penny being flung around the inside of a balloon. Your students will learn that experiments should be precisely measurable and repeatable in order for us to be sure that their results are reliable. In Math we will be doing a whirlwind review of long division and fractions. Most of the content that we cover this week should be that which your students have seen before, but it will be the most challenging content that they would have experience with. Long division can be scary for fourth graders, so we will make sure that we note any students that are having trouble and be working with them to create comfort and familiarity with splitting wholes up into equal parts. This will of course lead us straight to fractions, another area of math that seems difficult but is actually quite simple when you understand it. There is basically only one concept in fractions that you and your students need to drill: When you split a whole into equal parts, you can name the parts. Everything else is a convention. Keep this in mind when trying to deal with difficult problems. In ELA we will be reading and summarizing stories together as a class. This is the first step in learning how to compose clear and excellent summaries; an important skill for both reading comprehension and writing. A great way to help students become better at this skill is to have them summarize movies or stories you are encountering at home in complete sentences. This can be spoken, and can follow the format of "What happened first? What happened next? What happened last?" Upcoming Assessments1. Spelling test on Friday. 2. Literature Seminar on Friday. 3. Scientific Method quiz on Friday. 4. Math test on Friday. Other AnnouncementsRemember that this Tuesday is our first PSO family night at Peter Piper Pizza. It will be at the location on Dysart and will be a lot of fun! Check the Chronicles for more details.
Another thing to look out for are Deficiency Notices coming out next week. This is our way to let you know if your student is struggling to meet their academic goals for the quarter. A deficiency notice is not a death sentence for the quarter and can be quickly remedied with focused determination on the part of your student. If you receive one, make sure you are working with them nightly to get their homework done, and please feel free to email me with any questions you have about how to best help them.
This WeekIn Spalding this week we will begin our Spalding word notebook in earnest. We will complete the important rule pages in the beginning of the week and do our first 10 words on Thursday. There will be a spelling test on Friday (the 25th) on words drawn from rule page 2 and the 10 words we do on Thursday. Thursday night students will complete Spalding practice homework, and will require your help to do it correctly. Instructions will be sent home with the students. In Literature we will continue reading Prince Caspian and bring our story almost to an end. In the chapters ahead this week we will meet some terrifying creatures, and watch as Peter the High King fights the Usurper Miraz in a duel to determine the fate of Narnia. Be sure to ask your students what lessons we have learned from Caspian and the Pevensies. In Math we will continue to build our familiarity with numbers. One skill we will focus on is depicting and manipulating numbers using pictures. The symbols that we use to represent numbers are useful, but they can be restrictive if we cannot imagine numerical amounts outside of them. We will be looking at bar models and pictorial representations of problems in order to see that the world of numbers stretches beyond what we may imagine. For instance, in what ways can we show the difference between two numbers without using a subtraction symbol? Pictures and models are the foundations upon which our ancestors built mathematics, and by understanding these more ancient techniques your students will become more comfortable with mathematics in general. We will have a quiz on Wednesday (the 23rd) to assess how well students know their multiplication facts, specifically the facts for 2-5. In Science we will of course be talking about the astronomy behind a solar eclipse. What causes them, and why are such phenomena so rare? We will also be exploring the fundamentals of the scientific method, focusing specifically on the skill of careful observation. Our ability to observe and learn from our environment is the key to human progress and ingenuity. This has been true from Archimedes "Eureka" moment in his bathtub to the most cutting edge labs of modern day. In English Language Arts we will be reviewing the function of nouns, the "Naming Part" of the English language. Our ability to name things is key to our ability to understand them and create identity and sense out of the world around us. We will see that names can be common or very specific, and that we have the flexibility to use pronouns to take the place of nouns and make our speech more fluid. I hope to help your students gain a deeper understanding of our ability to name things in language, which is far more exciting than commonly understood. Upcoming Assessments1. Math assessment of multiplication facts. (Wednesday the 23rd) 2. Spelling test (Friday the 25th). Words will be drawn from rule page 2 in the Spalding notebook and from the 10 words we practice on Thursday. 3. On Wednesday students will do an ELA MAP assessment to help us determine what skills they will need reinforced for AZMERIT testing. They will each need a pair of headphones for this, so please make sure a pair makes it into their backpack by Tuesday. Other AnnouncementsCurriculum night is this Thursday(the 24th). Please arrive at 6:00 pm for an overview of what and how your student will learn this year. The event should be over by 7:00 pm.
As always, feel free to email me if you have any questions! During the first week we spent a lot of time going over and practicing procedures, and your students did rather marvelously. Both I and Mrs. Macleod were impressed by their effort and dedication to learning. This week we will begin diving into the content which will be the vehicle of learning this year. This WeekIn Spalding we will be setting up our Spalding notebooks and reviewing our phonograms. We will have a spelling test on Friday based on the words that will be on rule pages 1 and 2 in their Spalding notebook, but students should not try to memorize the spelling of those words. Instead they should work on memorizing the phonograms and their sounds and recalling the rules of spelling that we will go over through the week. In Literature we will continue reading Prince Caspian and exploring the story of the Pevensie children as they return to Narnia. Students will have reading and a worksheet every night as homework, so make sure you are checking to make sure it is getting done. It is ALWAYS beneficial to have your student read to you or another adult or older sibling. The benefits that are returned on such time investments are incredible. In Math we will be reviewing mental math strategies for doing subtraction. A skill students reviewed last week which will also be critical to their success with mental math in subtraction is "making tens." Making tens involves breaking apart numbers in your head in order to make groups of ten, which are easier to work with mentally. For example in the problem, 48+13, we would take 2 out of 13 and mentally add it to 48. This would change our number sentence to 50+11, which is far easier for us to add to the sum of 61. Mental math strategies give your student a comfort with math which leads to confidence and enjoyment. Encourage them to practice their mental math skills and they will greatly improve their math fluency. In History we will be learning about the fall of the Roman empire. Both internal and external forces had a part to play in the demise of the greatest power the ancient world had ever seen. Be sure to ask your students what weakened Rome and who ultimately toppled it in 476 A.D. In English Language Arts we will review the formation of Spalding cursive letters. After Tuesday all students will be expected to write in cursive at all times, unless otherwise stated. Require your scholar to write in cursive, and call them to a high standard of neatness and letter formation. Students will rise to our expectations, and if we are firm in our desire for neat and ordered handwriting, then they will surprise us with their ability to write beautifully. We will also be reviewing the concept of parts of speech in the English language and the role of nouns. A specific skill we will be learning is how to identify the difference between a common noun and a proper noun. Nouns are all around us every day. Help your student by asking them to identify whether a noun that comes up in conversation is a proper noun or a common noun. Ask them to explain why they give the answer they do in a complete sentence. If you make a habit of little reinforcement lessons like this, your child will easily pick up grammar concepts as they grow as a scholar. Upcoming AssessmentsThis week there will be several tests and quizzes at the end of the week: 1. Spelling Test (Friday the 18th) 2. Mental Math Skills Quiz (Thursday the 17th) 3. History Quiz on the Fall of the Roman Empire (Friday the 18th) *Quiz and test dates are subject to postponement if the teacher feels the class needs extra time learning the subject. Quiz and tests dates will never be given earlier than scheduled. **There may be a pop quiz the following week on common vs. proper nouns. Make sure your students are practicing at home! Other Announcements1. Remember that this Friday is a half-day! Students should not bring a lunch and dismissal begins at 12:00 pm.
2. We are planning for the upcoming partial-eclipse on August 21st. Because of the inherent dangers the eclipse poses to our students' eyes, we will likely be watching a live stream of the eclipse in our classrooms. We are taking every precaution to protect your students, but also give them access to this rare and exciting experience. |
AuthorBurk Ohbayashi is a husband, a father, and an educator. Archives
March 2018
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