Miss Hewitt's 4th Grade Blog: October 2015

Sunday, October 25, 2015

Newsletter for October 25th-30th

Ms. Hewitt’s Fourth Grade Class Newsletter

Sunday, October 25th, 2015

Good Afternoon Guardians and Students,

I had so much fun yesterday seeing so many families enjoying the many festivities at the Fall Festival. I love having the opportunity to see students running around with their classmates having fun! I enjoyed watching our incredible “For the Love of Reading” basket get tons of bids. Thank you all for your generous donations and for Alicia Teater for organizing and putting it all together for us. It was amazing!

Red Ribbon Week is this wee! Please participate by wearing sunglasses on Tuesday 10/27 to "Shade out drugs because our future's too bright" and wear a hat on Friday 10/30 to "Put a cap on drugs." Thanks for your support and participation.

Monday and Thursday morning I have a meetings from 8:00-8:20 a.m. so I will not be able to have students come in early to study. Sorry about the inconvenience this may cause for anyone.

Assessments are going to be given next week to show what students have learned the first trimester of fourth grade. I am so excited to share in your child’s growth during student-led conferences November 18th-20th.

Age of Sail training has begun and the 1st mate and crews will be established by the end of this week.

Language Arts-

Spelling City List #5 -words include: since, which, inch, string, picnic, etc. Students will complete assigned activities at home and will take the test in class Friday on their Chromebooks.
Vocabulary: Review life science plant vocabulary week 1 and 2 to prepare for life science test. Use Google Slides Presentations on Google Classroom and notes for additional resources.

Grammar: We will begin learning about complete sentences, fragments, and run-on’s.

Writing- We will begin working on our first five paragraph essay on the history of peanuts. They will be submitting these essays on Google Classroom by Friday.

Traditional Literature: We will continue our Folktale unit examining fables and performing readers’ theater fables.
AR point goals are due November 13th.
Our class Scholastics code is J2RYM

Math-

IXL Strands- Complete IXL strands 30 minutes a week is the minimum requirement.

Chapter 5: Multiply with Two-Digit Numbers -

Monday- Lesson 2- Estimate Products- D.13, D.14

Tuesday- Quiz on 1&2 then Lesson 3-Use the Distributive Property to Multiply - D.15

Wednesday- Lesson 4- Multiply by a Two Digit Number- D.17, D.18, D.21, D.22

Thursday- Lesson 5- Solve Multi-Step Word Problems- D.19

Friday- Lesson 6- Problem Solving: Make a Table- D.29, D.30

Go on XtraMath daily to become fluent in their math facts. Utilize Mangahigh to practice math facts using the game titled, Sundae Times. Our school ID is 67993.

Students have also been working on Base Ten and Counting and Operations on Front Row. Please encourage them to continue to use this adaptive, valuable resource!

Social Studies/ Science-

We will complete our life science study guide on plant parts and plant reproduction. Review study guide and notes with students at home.

Reminders/Mark Your Calendars-

Olympic Triathlon starts this week! Each student should bring in $5 to contribute to keeping our incredible specialty classes funded. Goal for each student is to bring in $180 total, which equals one dollar per each school day. Some ideas are to have a yard sale, hold a lemonade stand, have a bake sale, ask dear family members, in order to support your child’s school.
KCRA Kids Can Food Drive: We will be collecting non-perishable food items for the KCRA Kids Can Food Drive from October 26th-November 6th. We will be donating all of our food items to Joey’s Food Locker, which goes directly to families who reside in the Natomas Unified School District.
November 4th Science Exploration
No School, November 11th for Veteran’s Day and my birthday. :)
November 13th Last Day of 1st Trimester.
Student-Led Conferences- November 18th- 20th
No School for November Break: Monday 23rd- Monday 30th.
No School for Winter Break: Friday 18th- Friday, January 1st.
Age of Sail Field Lesson Tuesday, January 5th- Wednesday, 6th
Morning Study Hall has been a great success! If you want to come please remember to sign up by CLICKING HERE

Saturday, October 17, 2015

Newsletter October 17th-23rd

Ms. Hewitt’s Fourth Grade Class Newsletter

Saturday, October 17th, 2015

Good Morning Guardians and Students,

Week one of NWEA testing, with our own class Chromebooks, has been a huge success. Seeing students grow from their last year spring results has been a joy to watch. I can not wait to share their growth with you at parent-student-teacher conferences November 18th-20th. Our math NWEA test will be given Tuesday, October 20th from 8:30-9:50. It is important for students to come to school on time, alert with a good night sleep and nutritious breakfast.

On Thursday your child went home with a motivational bracelet reminding you all to donate your time or a gift for our 5th annual Fall Festival. Thank you all for bringing in books, money donations, bookmarks, book lights, and more. We really appreciate your donations. The last collection for donations will be on Monday, Oct 16th. To earn volunteer hours on the day of the event, please click the VolunteerSpot link to sign up for one or several time slots to help make the event possible. Sign up here for both opportunities: http://vols.pt/t4rwve Thank you! Contact Alicia at msaliciaanne@yahoo.com if you have questions.

Language Arts-

Spelling City List #27 Easily Confused Words -words include: quiet, quite, angle, angel, already, all ready, etc. Students will complete assigned activities at home and will take the test in class Friday on their Chromebooks.
Vocabulary: Life Science Vocabulary Part 2- words include: xylem, phloem, conifers, spores, seed dispersal, etc. Students will complete assigned activities both at home and in class. Students will take the test in class Friday on their Chromebooks.

Grammar: We will finish our unit on verb tenses.

Writing- Take our expository writing through the writing process.

Traditional Literature: Folktales- theme, point of view, refer to details, compare and contrast, are some common core standards we will discuss through folktales.
Our class Scholastics code is J2RYM

Math-

IXL Strands- Complete IXL strands 30 minutes a week is the minimum requirement. These strands should be completed from chapter 4 already: D.1-D.12

Chapter 4: Multiply with One-Digit Numbers -

Students did very well on this pre-test. We will be able to complete two lessons a day since students know this concept rather well.

Monday- Review and Quiz- finish ixl strands from last week

Tuesday- Lesson 10 and 11- finish ixl strands from last week

Wednesday- Study Guide online through McGrawHill

Thursday- Chapter 4 Test and chapter 5 pre-test (Multiply with two-digit numbers)

Friday- Chapter 5 Lesson 1- D.24

Go on XtraMath daily to become fluent in their math facts. Utilize Mangahigh to practice math facts using the game titled, Sundae Times. Our school ID is 67993.

Students have also been working on Base Ten and Counting and Operations no Front Row. Please encourage them to continue to use this adaptive, valuable resource!

Social Studies/ Science-

We have launched our life science unit this week. Thank you Jason, Lindsay, and Rocco for bringing in plants and resources for us to examine.

Reminders/Mark Your Calendars-

Olympic Triathlon Student Kick-Off, “Watch It Wednesday Video” starts this week!
High School Info Night on October 20th from 6:00PM to 8:00PM on our Pebblewood campus. Representatives from local high schools will be there to present their program and answer parent questions.
After hearing from a lot of families Alicia Teater has help create a classroom directory!
Our 5th annual WCS Fall Festival is on Sat. October. 24th from 2:00-6:00 pm. Can't wait to see you all there!
November 4th-Science Exploration Night- more info coming your way.
Morning Study Hall has been a great success! If you want to come please remember to sign up by CLICKING HERE

Saturday, October 3, 2015

Newsletter October 3rd-16th

Ms. Hewitt’s Fourth Grade Class Newsletter

Saturday, October 3rd, 2015

Good Morning Guardians and Students,

What a wonderful week! I am so proud of over half of the class clipping up on the AR goal chart because they earned 8 points from passing the Westing Game novel! The class was so ecstatic and proud of each other! It was a perfect way to end a unit before Fall Break. New grades have already been entered in Infinite Campus and will be updated throughout the week. Students will have their social studies test passed back on Monday. Everything else has been entered in Infinite campus (spelling, vocabulary, Westing Game test, and Chapter 3 math test).

Break time is a great time to relax, get comfortable, and read. Please encourage your son or daughter to read daily. Also utilize Xtramath, Scootpad (grammar and reading support), IXL, FrontRow, for extra support. We will be starting our first science unit when we return so please collect leaves, pinecone, acorns, seeds, any interesting plants for our first science investigation project.

NWEA tests will be given as soon as we get back from break. Our dates are scheduled for Tuesday, October 13th from 8:30-9:50, Thursday, October 15th from 10:50-11:55, and Tuesday, October 20th from 8:30-9:50. It is important for students to come to school on time, alert with a good night sleep and nutritious breakfast.

The start of our school Book Fair will be at the Fall Festival Oct 24 and run through the next Friday.

Thank You Alicia for your hard work in organizing our Fall Festival Basket for our class! The Fall Festival basket this year is "For the Love of Reading!" This is a great way to share favorite books and benefit our class. We will collect all donations by Oct 16th so that we can put the basket together by the deadline. We also get the opportunity to earn volunteer hours on the day of the event. Please click the Volunteer Spot link to sign up for one or several time slots to help make the event possible. Sign up here for both opportunities: http://vols.pt/t4rwve Thank you! Contact Alicia at msaliciaanne@yahoo.com if you have questions.

Language Arts-

Spelling City List #26 Homophones -words include: lived, living, rattled, rattling, studied, studying, etc. Students will complete assigned activities at home and will take the test in class Friday on their Chromebooks.
Vocabulary: Life Science Vocabulary- words include: petal, pistil, stamen, sepal,etc. Students will complete assigned activities both at home and in class. Students will take the test in class Friday on their Chromebooks.

Grammar: We will begin our unit on verb tenses.

Writing- Take our expository writing through the writing process.

Traditional Literature: Folktales- theme, point of view, refer to details are some common core standards we will discuss through folktales.
Our class Scholastics code is J2RYM

Math-

IXL Strands- Complete IXL strands 30 minutes a week is the minimum requirement. These strands should be completed from chapter 3 already: D.1, D.2, D.3, D.4, D.8, D.9.

Chapter 4: Multiply with One-Digit Numbers -

Students did very well on this pre-test. We will be able to complete two lessons a day since students know this concept rather well.

Monday- Lessons 1 & 2: Multiples of 10, 100, and 1,000/ Round to Estimate Products - D.8, D.12

Tuesday- Lesson 3 & 4: Hands on with place value and models to multiply- D.5

Wednesday- Lesson 5- Multiply by a two-digit number: Quiz lessons 1-4.

Thursday- Lesson 6 & 7: Regrouping and distributive property, D.10, D.11.

Friday- Lesson 8 & 9: Regrouping and Multiply with a Multi-Digit Number- D.6, D.7