Week of September 30th

Students took their Unit 1 math tests on Wednesday. Your child should have come home with their test on Friday.  Tests can remain at home, however please look for the  sticker in your child's assignment notebooks that parents should sign once they've looked over the test with their child.  Please let me know if you have any questions about the test or  the verification process.

 

Science Test on Tuesday:  Students came home with their green vocabulary cards on Thursday night.  Please be sure students review these words over the weekend in preparation for their test on Tuesday; vocabulary is a large portion of their Magnetism and Electricity unit test. 

 

 

Reader's Notebooks will be coming home with students on Monday.  Below are the expectations:

- Bring between home and school each day (should be kept in reading bags to make this a simple transition)

- Title and author page for each book

- Organized (entries have dates to help monitor progress and time spent on one book.)

- Work should reflect student's own thinking and ideas, not repeating what the author has already shared

- Multiple pages of entries per book

- Thinking is about the whole book (student shows a variety of entries from the beginning, middle, and end of the book)

Inside the front cover of their notebook students will have a sheet that will help remind them of guidelines and display different ways of showing our thinking that we practice daily during our mini lessons. Students have been doing a fantastic job using these strategies with their post-its and are eager to push their thinking further in their notebooks.  

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday is an Early Release Day:  Students will be released at 1:40pm. Lunch will still be served for students.

 

We had perfect weather and learned an abundant amount of information regarding Wisconsin Agriculture. The Oconomowoc FFA students did a wonderful job teaching our students about machinery, different farm animals, and planting. They had a blast! Enjoy a few photos from our trip!

 

Week of September 16th

It was wonderful meeting with many of you for Parents Night on Thursday. If you were unable to attend please double check your child's backpack, I sent home a copy of the presentation on Friday. If the presentation was misplaced or you have questions please feel free to contact me.

Next week we will have our first math test. The Unit 1 test will  cover concepts of geometry such as drawing and describing rays, lines, line segments, classifying and identifying polygons, and elapsed time. Elapsed time is a challenging skill and we have practiced several times this past week.

The PTO provided all classroom teachers with an Ipad this year for teacher and student use. (Many, many, many thanks to our Summit PTO!) To help practice telling time to the nearest minute and elapsed time, students had the opportunity to work with the wonderful app called "Kids Time Fun". I would recommend this app to families who have access to an Apple device. The degree of difficulty can be adjusted so that it can be helpful for student at all grade levels!

FFA Field Trip:  This Wednesday is our first field trip! This field trip is entirely outdoors so students should dress for the weather.  Tennis shoes must be worn for the trip!  Lunch is not needed as we will be leaving Summit School at 1:00 and returning around 2:30.  Fingers crossed for a sunny day!


Fundraising packets went home with students on Thursday. If our class has 50% participation we will win a pizza party! Yummy! The money raised helps the PTO provide students with access to Ipads, Smart boards, lower field trips costs, etc.  

Sell! Sell!! Sell!!!

Abundance of News

As week 2 concludes, we have an abundance of news and exciting things going on in Fourth Grade.

Recess Rodeo:
This week we revisited recess expectations during Recess Rodeo. We discussed and practiced different games, line up procedures, and equipment safety. Mr. Dirkmann taught us a new game called Spud. This is a great game to play as a family!

 

FFA Field Trip:

Your child came home with a purple field trip permission slip for our annual FFA Farm Field Trip. The Field trip permission forms are due on Friday, September 20th. Thank you to the Oconomowoc High School FFA for providing this trip for us. Please let me know if your form has been misplaced and need a new one.

 

Parent Night:

Please join us this Thursday, September 19th, at 7:30 in the Summit Library to learn more about 4th grade!

 

Book Order:

Our first book order of the year will come home with your child on Monday. The September book of the month is, Star Wars: Jedi Academy. Our online order code is J44M7. Book orders are due Friday, September 20th.

 

 

https://orders.scholastic.com/J44M7

 

MAPS testing:

 

The next few weeks Summit students will begin MAPS Testing. Our class will test on Friday, September 20th and 27th. If appointments can be avoided on the mornings of those days it is greatly appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Week of Fourth Grade

Phew! Our first week went by very quickly. We had a great first week together on Planet Koski. We worked on establishing classroom and school expectations, began building our classroom community, wrote a creative piece of writing about "If an Alien came to town he/she would...", read great books, and helped our 4K buddies on the appropriate busses at the end of each day.

Your child brought home their reading logs for the first time Friday evening. Students should enter their reading information in their logs each time they read. At this point in the year, students are expected to read a minimum of 25 minutes nightly (Monday-Thursday) and 25 minutes over the weekend (Friday-Sunday). Students are encouraged to jot their thinking on post-its and track their reading in their reading logs. It is important for them to bring their log and book back and forth from home to school so they can read the same book continuously as well as keep their reading information consistent in their log.

Last Call! Summer "Read Like Crazy" reading logs are due on Tuesday, September 11th.

 

 

Picture day is on Thursday, September 12th.

 

 

 

 

To help build our classroom community, we talked about what it means to fill someone's bucket by reading the book, Have You Filled a Bucket Today?, by Carol McCloud. Ask your child what it means to fill a bucket and how to fill someone's bucket.

You fill their bucket everyday!

 

A link to a digital reading of the book: http://www.schooltube.com/video/c4a04c15736b010b144a/