New Math Fact App!

Dear Fourth Grade Families,

Happy New Year! Today was great to have your children back at school. We certainly missed them! We are getting back into the routine of school this week and part of that is doing math fact practice daily. This practice is important for more complex problems, such as with our last unit. When scoring these assessments, it was evident that we need to continue to practice our math facts. We practice at school for 10 min. right after lunch but the practice done at home is very important as well. Please help your child to make this short amount of time valued to practice multiplication and division facts.

There are several suitable resources to practice multiplication facts. Those resources could include splash math, TenMarks, IXL,  Fact Master or even flash cards. I am excited to announce a new resource! There is a new app to download tonight for math fact practice. Mr. Siegrist, Matt’s dad, has created a math facts app with visual models! Thanks to Mr. Siegrist for sharing his expertise with us, to other teachers and students. The app is currently only available by the link. There is also a link located on the assignment notebook for you to access and download.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/math-practice-with-blocks/id951374468?ls=1&mt=8

Thank you for your support at home,

Mrs. Driscoll

Monday, Dec. 1, 2014

Next week Monday we will have Personal Safety class by Amanda DeSua our School Counselor:

Dear Parents and Guardians,

Your child will begin the “Personal Safety” lesson soon. The lesson

includes the following themes:

• Physical Safety and Respect

• Private Body Safety and Respect

• Safety Regarding Strangers and Others

• Respect for Bodies and Gender

• Internet Safety and Respect (5th grade)

At the end of each lesson, children will be encouraged to talk with

family members and other adult caregivers about the concepts. Talking

with your child about these topics can enhance his or her ability to

avoid or deal with potentially harmful situations. If you have any

questions about this curriculum topic, please feel free to call.

Sincerely,

Amanda DeSua M. Ed. NBPTS School Counselor

District Elementary Guidance and Counseling Services 262-970-3013

adesua@waukesha.k12.wi.us

World Hello Day

Hello! Bonjour! Hola! Konichiwa! Ni-Hao!

Today was World Hello Day and Ms. King's class celebrated by researching 24 countries and learning how to say hello in 24 different languages!  The students enjoyed using their resources to research countries around the world.  They learned many unique things about the different places!

All classes explored different ways to say HELLO during reading, so ask your child this weekend to greet you in a different way!

Ms. King

Science, Social Studies and Spelling Update

Science- We have concluded our studies of Earth Science focusing on soil, weathering and landforms with a creative opportunity to come up with some solutions to rapid changes in landforms. Each student made a booklet in BookCreator to show their new ideas to help deal with problems caused by floods, volcanoes and earthquakes.  Ask your child to share theirs with you.

Social Studies- Maps and globes have been our focus these last few weeks.  We are learning how to use latitude and longitude to locate places on our Earth.  We shared our Travel projects using technology to travel anywhere in the world. Today was a summative assessment. Tomorrow we will begin work on a summative project.

Spelling- Tomorrow we will have a posttest on week 10 words. We continue to work on different spelling patterns each week. We sort the various words by patterns, share our understanding of their meanings through pictures, definitions and sentences. Each week children can use the Spelling City app or website to practice the weekly words with tests, practice and games.

Writing- After completing a personal narrative, we are now working on a new narrative based on a circle story format, to show our understanding of the skills we've been studying. These fun stories are patterned after the If You Give a Mouse a Cookie... series. Watch for soon to be published books!

Family Information- As teachers we appreciate the support from home that our students receive. We realize that there is quite a bit of new technology that is involved for those attempting to do this! Besides keeping an eye on assignments and grades posted in Infinite Campus, please use the BlackBoard district site to stay updated on your child's activities.  Our 4th grade assignment notebook is posted here daily.  If you click on Word Work you can find Spelling weekly lists.  The Social Studies button will link you to projects, assignments and many practice opportunities including videos and games. The Science button will show vocabulary words, focus questions, and links to audio recordings of the science book. To see some of the work your son or daughter hands in that is not in paper form, you can have them show you their Showbie account.  We use this format to distribute and collect some electronic assignments. Please feel free to contact me if I can be of assistance with any of this.

Last week Friday we had a great time sharing Reading time with our First Grade Buddies.

Thanks,

Mrs. Johnson

Math Update

Dear Fourth Grade Families,

In Math, your children have completed a summative unit assessment. They tracked progress from the pre-assessment to formative assessment to the final summative assessment using a radar chart. We also took time to reflect on the progress made during the unit through a written reflection. The children were asked to sit down with you and discuss their progress and next steps. Reflection of the learning corresponds to our Habit of the Mind, Thinking about our Thinking. I was pleased to see those boys and girls that took the time to think critically about their learning habits and how it affected their progress through the unit! Many of the reflections included amazing insight!

We are quickly moving to understanding multi-digit multiplication. In fourth grade the method of solving multi-digit multiplication is through an understanding of place value and of the properties of operations, especially the distributive property. This method varies greatly from the standard method of multiplication that most adults learned. There are many advantages to student learning and deeper understanding when they become proficient with multi-digit multiplication using the "new" methods.

I have started to upload our mini-lessons on bb9 for student and family use. The students have found this helpful to review information at home using the exact lesson examples and information. This will also provide families with a resource for gaining understanding and for staying up to date on what we are learning! I hope that you take advantage of this resource. Another way to stay informed on the current learning is to ask your child to go through their Math Thoughtful Logs with you. The strategies section includes learning targets and strategies for solving problems. Most of the children are doing a fantastic job of keeping this resource organized well and full of great learning! I will post some examples of proficient Log entries coming up.

As always, thank you for the support at home.

iPads being disabled with District Banned Apps

App Name	Icon	Approved Alternative
Snapchat		Email/ iMessage
Instagram		Email/ iMessage
Kik		Email/ iMessage
Oovoo		Email/ iMessage
Opendoor		None
Pufin	Puffin and Puffin Free Banned	Puffin Academy is Approved
Yikyak		None
Whisper		None

Consequences for Banned Apps

If a student has one of the Banned Apps (see list above) installed on their device the system will automatically Impose the following sanctions on the device .  

1. You will receive an icon on your iPad that looks like this
2. You will be blocked from installing apps
3. Your Web Browsing will be restricted to only district sites like Blackboard and Google.
4. Your Camera will be disabled

Once the offending apps have been removed the system will re-scan the device ( may take up to 24 hours) and remove the restrictions.

 

4th Grade Students Teach Empathy and Flexible Thinking