September 5, 2014
Dear 4th Grade Families,
Your fantastic children have already completed their first week of 4th grade! Wow, we are excited about our year of learning ahead. We wanted to take a moment to inform you about a few important items and give you a little peek into our first week!
First Week
During this first week, we have been so impressed with our new group of 4th graders! As a grade level and in each rotation valuable time has been spent to begin getting to know one another and to build our community of learners. Your children began rotations with each teacher for Reading with Ms. King, Science and Social Studies with Mrs. Johnson and Math with Mrs. Driscoll. We are quickly learning procedures and routines in each rotation and as a group.
Thank you to those who have already turned in the permission slip for Lapham Peak and to those who have volunteered their time to chaperone.. Your help is already appreciated! If you have not yet returned the permission slip, please return it to school on Monday. Remember that if you have volunteered to chaperone, please be sure that your background check is on file with the office or contact the office to arrange to complete one.
Assignment Notebook & Communication
This year the fourth grade teaching team will be using a shared electronic assignment notebook to present to students the assignments/notes/reminders that should be written in student assignment notebooks. The shared feature ensures consistency and will allow for electronic student and parent access at school and home. Another feature to this format is that you and your student will have access to previous days and weeks in case of an absence or an appointment.. Students will be able to access this information with families and make sure that they know what they missed. Soon we will post the link to the assignment notebook to Blackboard 9, SDW’s electronic learning platform. Blackboard 9 (bb9) will give students and families an opportunity to access curricular resources and communication behind a password protected structure. With the district’s move to Infinite Campus, the online gradebook, it will be a few weeks before family access to bb9 is available. Once it is ready for family access, you will use the same parent username and password for IC and bb9. Students will learn how to access the student side of bb9 soon and will be able to share that with you. We will also begin to post parent communication on bb9 as well once it is fully functional. In the meantime, communication will be a hard copy. If your family is in need of a hard copy of communication, please let us know so that we can make arrangements for that.
ALL students will be given time for writing assignments into their assignment notebooks at the end of the day. Students are responsible for writing everything that is included by the teaching team. “If we write it, you write it” is the expectation. At home, you will be an important role in helping your child to stay accountable for being responsible with doing this daily. This will help your child know that when they write it down, they must also make sure they understand, before they go home, what it is that they need to complete and how to complete it. We encourage students to ask each other and the teaching team to clarify when they have a question. We believe that our students can be responsible for this without the need for a daily teacher signature. Since email is the best way to communicate to the team, we won’t be checking assignment notebooks for communication and daily parent signatures from home. Fourth grade is such a great year of growth in responsibility, we are confident that your children will be able to stay accountable. If there are patterns in unfinished or late work with your child, then we will need to require a parent signature to assist with growing in this responsibility.
The best way to reach any of the teaching team is through email so please feel free to email with questions or concerns regarding your child’s learning. We are looking forward to working with you!
Mrs. Carrie Driscoll 4th Grade Math/Writing
970-1363
Mrs. Kathy Johnson 4th Grade Sciences/Spelling/Writing
970-1311
Ms. Courtney King 4th Grade Reading/Writing
970-1373
cking@waukesha.k12.wi.us
iPads
An iPad checklist was sent from the office and handed out on the open house night last week. Thank you for taking the time to be sure that iPads are in good condition, chargers are accounted for and carrying bags are being used each school day. If you are in need of another charger, they can be purchased from Mrs. Rauchle in the office for $30.00. If a carrying bag has been lost or damaged, another should be purchased next week for $5.00.
We began having conversations with your children to remember our privilege of using iPads as learning tools and to be sure that we understand our responsibilities to be safe, be responsible and be respectful at all times with devices. Some important points made by the children during our conversations were that iPads must be fully charged and ready for learning EVERY day, only appropriate apps that help to reach learning goals are on devices, iPads must have student photo on the lockscreen background and passcodes should not be on devices to ensure accessibility to staff at any time. Please take the time to help your child “clean up” their devices over the weekend. We want to start the year off well with our learning tools and that starts with a device ready to use for learning. We appreciate your partnership with the district, Bethesda staff and your child in your ownership and responsibility for managing apple id’s as your children have the privilege of using district owned devices as learning tools.
Necessary Apps
Listed below are a few important apps that we will begin using soon. We would like to provide you time to download these apps for or with your children over the weekend. We will begin using some of these as early as next week and we want all children to be prepared with the necessary tools. If you need to access internet, you are welcome to do this download here at school on Monday morning to ensure your child is prepared. Free wi-fi can also be accessed at locations like McDonald’s, Starbucks and the public library.
You will need to go to the App Store located on the homescreen and then type the name of each app into the search box. Some of these apps may already be downloaded from last year. 
Thanks so much for your cooperation and support at home. We are looking forward to learning with you and your children!
The Fourth Grade Team
Spelling City 
ScootPad 
Socrative Student 
Showbie 
Baiboard
IXL
QR Reader
Thank you reading through this important information. We know it was a lot, but it will help us get off to a great start. We thank you for your support in advance as we begin our year of learning together with your fabulous 4th graders!
Mrs. Driscoll, Mrs. Johnson and Ms. King
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