Important Reminders…..

Our first field trip will be Friday November 6th, today your child should be bringing home a permission slip and green info note. See a copy of the note below. Please let me know if you have any questions.

The theme for our class basket to be auctioned at the HES Fall Festival (Saturday, Nov 7th) is baking and cooking. Some ideas of items to donate; cookie cutters, sprinkles, baking mixes, or anything you can think of!

What’s going on in our classroom…

It’s getting pretty wild in here, actually! For the next several weeks we are focusing our reading, writing, and science time on animal adaptations. Students have chosen an animal and begun their research, specifically into what about that animal helps it survive. We have talked about how reading as a researcher is different than reading for pleasure, and how to annotate a text or take notes to later turn into paragraphs. Eventually they will compose a feature article, complete with nonfiction text features (like phots, graphs, charts, etc).  We have also identified things that seem really strange about certain animals, but that are actually really helpful for their survival.

In math we have reviewed rounding and multi digit addition and subtraction. Our next topic is area and perimeter. We will still continue to review multiplication facts, please continue to work on these at home as well. Knowing multiplication facts up to the 10’s with automaticity (having them memorized) is crucial to success with multi digit multiplication and division. Many students are practicing these on www.tenmarks.com or other sites that we’ve used in class. If you would like info about how to help your child master these facts, please let me know.

important dates:

October 30 field trip money and permission slips due

November 2-6 HES bookfair (we will visit as a class on the 5th)

                 6 field trip to Reed’s Gold Mine State Historic Site

 7 HES Fall Festival 10-2

11 No school, Veteran’s Day

    25-27     Thanksgiving Break

December 2 Early Release

11 end of the 2nd quarter

**Field trip info**

FIELD TRIP REMINDERS

4th grade is going  to Reed’s Gold Mine Historic Site in Midland NC on Friday, November 6th. The cost for this trip is $24.00 per person for both students and chaperones. Please send in the completed permission slip and money for students and parents riding the bus by Friday October 30th.  If you are driving your own car and meeting us there you will pay Reed’s Mine (for panning) when you arrive. PLEASE EMAIL YOUR CHILD’S TEACHER ASAP IF YOU WOULD LIKE A CHAPERONE SPOT ON THE BUS. Students and chaperones will need to bring a bagged lunch and drink. Food and drinks are allowed on the buses, but drinks must be in bottles (no cans or juice boxes) and they ask that students not have gum or candy. This is an extended day trip. Please see the itinerary below.

itinerary for Reed’s Gold Mine field trip

7:00- arrive at HES, board the bus

7:15- depart HES

9:30- arrive at Reed’s Gold Mine State Historic Site

9:45-11:35 students will be in 4 groups, rotate between stations: film, exhibits, underground tour, stamp mill

11:35-12:15 lunch

12:15-1:45 finish rotations

2:00 board the buses, depart Reed’s Gold Mine

~4:15 arrive back at HES

**Our return time is an estimate, if you are not joining us for the trip please make arrangements for your child to go to afterschool or be picked up at school at 4:00 pm. We will call you if we are running ahead or behind schedule. **

Welcome Back! 

Even though fall break is AWESOME,  I was so happy to see all of your kiddos Monday morning! I sure did miss them!

Here's some important info about our 2nd 9 weeks:

PTA FALL FESTIVAL

Each year, the PTA hosts a fall festival (or in the past a winter carnival). For the festival each year, classes put together a themed basket to raffle off.  This year, our class basket theme is "Baking and Cooking"!  If you are able to provide an item  (Or Gift cards to Barnes and Noble, or Purple Crow, etc) to add to our basket, please send in donations by November 2nd.  I'll keep them until the PTA comes to collect the baskets.  We also need a basket to put the books in.  If anyone has a basket at home they are willing to give up, it would be greatly appreciated!

READING
This quarter we are focusing our reading time on nonfiction. So far  we have identified similarities and differences between fiction and nonfiction, and started identifying and discussing nonfiction text features such as charts, graphs, maps,etc. I am asking that for the next week or so students have a nonfiction book as there "just right" book for independent reading time in class and at home. 

Some questions to ask your child to find out a little more about what we are learning:

- What does it mean to "activate your prior knowledge"?
-Why is it important to activate your prior knowledge before reading nonfiction?
-Besides the text, what do authors include in nonfiction to help you learn an understand?


WRITING
Writing will be very similar to reading this 9 weeks, as we are also focusing on nonfiction. Right now we are identifying and practicing research skills to acquire information to write a nonfiction piece. We are starting VERY small, but by the end of the quarter your child will compose a feature article about an an animals and its adaptations for survival. 

SCIENCE
We are currently working on how the surface of the changes, specifically erosion, weathering, and deposition. Later in the quarter our science objectives will be integrated into the animal adaptation writing project mentioned above. 


MATH
In math we are working on place value. We are reviewing writing and understanding numbers in different forms, for example:

standard form: 2,345

word form: two thousand three hundred forty-five

expanded form: 2,000+300+40+5

Next we move on to adding and subtracting multi-digit numbers.

I'm excited to share that we now have access to a great online math program. Your child may have used Tenmarks some last year. This year the county has purchased the "premium" version for all Orange County students. Yesterday I sent home sheets with the access code you need to use this program at home. Right now I am not requiring any work on Tenmarks be completed at home, but I may in the future. Right now I encourage you to have your child work on some of the "jam sessions" (fluency practice) and any games that they have earned enough points to purchase.


Many of you have asked if there is anything we need in our classroom, I just can't thank you enough for your kindness and generosity for our students! Right now we could use some pencils- please no mechanical ones as they have proved to be a huge distractions for some of our classmates.

As always please feel free to contact me at any time if you have questions or concerns about your child.

Important Dates:

October       13     Case21 benchmark assessment for all 4th graders (reading)
                    14     EARLY RELEASE and Case21 benchmark assessment for all 4th graders (math)
                    15     Safe Touch program

November     7     PTA Fall Festival
                     11    No School- Veteran's Day
                     25-27  Thanksgiving Break

December     2     early release
                     11    last day of the 2nd 9 weeks