Week of October 28th

 

 

We had a blast at our Halloween party! We played bingo, created our spooktacular craft, and had many munchies and laughs! Check out all of the great costumes!

On Thursday, we are asking students to bring a flashlight to school to participate in a fun writing activity.


Students will come home with their math fact long on Monday. Just a reminder that students will need to bring their log back on Friday with 30 minutes of documented math fact practice for the week. I will be looking for 30 minutes of math fact practice and parent signatures next to each log-in time.

On Wednesday, students came home with their social studies quiz's. Please make sure they are signed and returned to school.

Word study will return this week! Since we had a week off, please remind students to check that they have completed all assignments correctly based on the homework guideline sheet in their notebooks.

This week we will begin to prepare for the WKCE. On the following website, http://oea.dpi.wi.gov/oea_wkce_home , you can find access to practice test materials. We will complete some of these at school to help us get ready.

Week of October 21st

Our Halloween Party will be on Thursday, October 24th. Please be sure your child has 2 empty toilet paper rolls so that they are able to participate in our spooktacular craft. Students should bring their costume to school in a bag, we will change into costumes prior to the 10:00 parade. We have early release on this day. Students will end their day at 12:40.

Reading News:

On Monday, we will start our new unit, nonfiction. This will be a great opportunity for students to build on the skills they have already developed as nonfiction readers and add a few more strategies to their reading toolbox. During independent time students will focus on reading nonfiction texts. However, we would still like them to read fiction at home and jot in their readers notebooks. Below is a picture of the expectations for their readers notebooks. As a class we developed and discussed the expectations for each graded level. Students should continue to turn in their reader's notebooks after each chapter book they finish.

 

 

 

 

Important information for this week:

 

 - Due to the short week, we will not have word study.

- Look for math tests to come home with your child on Monday. Please sign the sticker in their assignment notebooks stating that you have seen your child's test and discussed it with them.

- On Friday, students brought home their vocabulary words and answer key to help prepare for their quiz on Wednesday. The quiz will have an emphasis on matching the vocabulary terms with their definition.

Week of October 13th

On Friday, we were fortunate enough to be able to have some players from the Cooney Football team read to us. We joined Mrs. Ganser's class as they read a silly book, Fox in Love, and talked to us about their reading and personal lives. Go Oconomowoc!

The Book Fair is here! As a class, we will go to the Book Fair on Tuesday from 1:00-1:20. There are a lot of great selections this year!

Thursday we will have our Unit 2 math test. This test will cover place value, adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers, and analyzing data. Look for review packets to come home at the beginning of the week.


Parent homework reminder: Parents your homework is due on Monday. :) Your child brought home a green form on Wednesday regarding topics to be discussed at conferences. Thank you for taking the time to fill this form out, I want to make sure that we cover all of the topics you would like to discuss in our short time together.

 

Our Halloween party will be on Thursday, October 24th. Mrs. Antonneau is putting together a fun craft for our class to create during the party. We need your help by sending in two empty toilet paper rolls with your child. You may start to send them in now, but please make sure your child has them by the 24th.

Week of October 7th

Summit School is very excited to welcome our Guest Author, David Shannon, to Summit Elementary School on Tuesday afternoon.  We discussed, read, and shared why we love so many of his books this past week. We practiced our reading strategy of forming theories about characters while we read his book, Alice the Fairy.   What an exciting opportunity for our students to meet one of their favorite authors!

 

Students were introduced to our district's new keyboarding program on Friday. We will be working on our keyboarding skills two times a week, however to truly solidify these skills and encourage transference, practicing at home is ideal. At school students will use the website, http://www.typingweb.com , which can be accessed at home too! Student logins are the same logins they use to get on the computers at school. Additional websites can be found under our "Online Learning Resources tab".

If you have not done so already, take a moment to look over students' science tests that came home last week.  Please sign and return these tests to me.

We had a great start to tracking our thinking in our Reader's Notebooks this week. So far we are off to a pretty good start working to extend our thinking. We will continue this practice for the entire school year adding different strategies to document our thinking as we continue to grow as readers. This work should be done throughout the whole book, not just a final reflection at the end of the book. When students finish their chapter book, they should hand in their notebooks to me. Ask your child to see their work they did in their notebooks this week.

 

Reminders: Word study notebooks are due to school on Thursdays.  These should be coming back and forth between home and school each night.  Notebooks may or may not be coming home on Thursdays, however their WORDS definitely should!  Spelling tests are always on Fridays.  For a detailed description of the nightly homework expectations, please see the green sheet stapled to the inside back cover of their notebooks. 

Please help remind your students that part of their Wednesday night homework is to write an explanation sentence at the end of each column of their blind sort, stating why the words belong there. As a class we are working towards remembering this important step.

The Book Fair is coming!  Our class will have the opportunity to shop the book fair on October 15th from 1:00-1:20. The book fair is also open late on certain nights if you'd like to join your child during their shopping time!  Please check with the office for specific dates and times. 

 

 

 

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.