-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. Comments are closed.
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AuthorBurk Ohbayashi is a husband, a father, and an educator. Archives
March 2018
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