Saturday, September 27, 2008

Field Trip, library books and classroom update

We have several events coming up this week, including our field trip to see Sleepy Hollow. This is on Thursday, so please remember if you have preordered a lunch. If not, remember to bring your own from home. We are sorry that we are unable to accommodate parent chaperones, but space in the actual theater is very limited. In the future, we would love to have parents join us. Please see the Pendleton Press for additional events, such as Photo Day and fundraiser deadlines.

This week, we continued with adding and subtracting numbers, including rounding to certain place values first. One area where students usually have difficulty is in subtracting across zeros. For example, 1000-872. Students need to know when to borrow and which number become 9 and which have 10 added to them.

Some students are learning how to create ToonDoo educational cartoons, which yuo can view on our Creativity Blog. The students are still studying plant sin Mrs. Moore's science class. They need to make sure they study for these tests and take all of their homework seriously. Remember to view your child's grades online and discuss positives and negatives with him or her.

What story did we read in language arts this week? What story will we read this coming week? Ask your child; get engaged.

Lastly, Thursday will be our library day and all book sneed to come back that day. If a student wants to check a book out again it must be RE-checked.

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Update for Sept 18, 2008

Happy Wednesday! From a teacher's perspective, these minimum days go by way too quickly. There are so many things to teach in fourth grade and truly so little time. Please review the daily activities with your child and check over their homework. Also, remember that grade are online, so hold the kids accountable. If they received a poor grade, why? What can they do better next time?

I am always being asked if there is anything we need in class and I have an idea. I have a pot for a plant, but no plant to go into it. Its a small pot, maybe one that could be filled with a little guy from the dollar store or something. Something hardy would be best. If you can donate a small plant that we can pot at school ( we have soil) that would be great. We only need one, so if you can do it, please just post a comment to this post so others will see and know it has been taken care of.

Our blogs are up and running. Many students have already written their own post for our Daily Blog and some are working on projects for our Creativity at Work blog. YOUR JOB: read them over and post a short comment at the bottom. This is very inspiring for the students. Please see this link to learn more about blog comments.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Update for Sept. 12, 2008

Many thanks to all the parents (and students) who visited for Back to School Night. Additional thanks to those parents who joined us on our Sept. 11 Freedom Walk.

If you missed the presentations, one of the newest additions is the availability of grades online. You can visit Engrade.com and enter your username and password to view the grades. Please note that the grades there may not be the exact grades your child will receive on his/her report card because there is an element of subjectivity, as well as other factors that play a part. Small slips of paper with individual access codes will be coming home. If a student loses this they will have to pay classroom money to receive another.

Please email me with any other questions, comments or concerns.