Updates and announcements

First blog post of the year! I hope everyone had a lovely summer. My cats are sad to see me go to work every day, but I am excited to get the year started.

A routines and expectations packet will go home with your child this week. Please review the contents of the package and send back the signed last sheet with your student. It contains some important information on snacks, birthday treat policy, our homework and grading policy, and our classroom rules. 

If you have not filled out and given me the contact sheet from Meet the Teacher Night, please send that in with your student as soon as possible. Additionally, please be sure to fill out this google form about your child if you have not already.

Our week in learning

Students will learn about the idiom “Birthday Suit”.

Students will learn about the roots canis, feles, and leon on Wednesday. Students will be quizzed over these roots next Wednesday. They should expect a similar quiz every week over the previous week’s roots.

In Literature, we will review Prince Caspian and begin reading Voyage of the Dawn Treader. Please send Voyage of the Dawn Treader in with your students this week. 

In Grammar, we will set up their notebooks and review parts of a sentence and rules of capitalization.

This week in science, students will begin their study of the scientific method. We will set up our science notebooks, which students will use throughout the year to take notes in, and discuss the importance of scientists and the nature of scientific inquiry. We will read about Gaileo as a model of what a scientist looks like and practice our discussion skills. Students will also learn what makes a good hypothesis in preparation for the Floating Egg Demonstration on Friday.

This week in history and geography students will be reintroduced to basic world geography (7 continents and 5 oceans) and will begin studying the major lakes of the world. The students will have 3 brief quizzes on world lakes. n.b. These will only assess their ability to identify the location and names of the lakes on a given map. On Wednesday, students will be quizzed on the location and names of major lakes of Africa, on Thursday the major lakes of South America, on Friday the major lakes of North America. On Thursday, students will be given a study guide for their Unit 1: World Lakes test, which will be administered on Thursday, August 15^th.

In math, students will take a 4th grade test for teacher use (no grades given). Students will start our first unit on Whole Numbers on Wednesday. Students will work with standard and expanded form, rounding and estimating. We will begin math groups in a few weeks-after we get our feet on the ground.