Q2W1
Welcome back from Fall Break! Mrs. Heisler here, I'm on blog duty for the quarter. I hope you all enjoyed your time off and had exciting adventures as a family. I took my son to Colorado for college visits and we had a great time watching the Air Force Academy beat Wyoming in an intense and engaging win!
This is the first week of Quarter 2. Fourth grade dives into new and exciting curriculum this quarter including: Math chapters with more challenging bar model word problems and fractions, continuing Middle Ages History and a unit on Ancient China, Meteorology in Science and learning the elements of a 5 paragraph essay and execution of the Robin Hood Essay before Winter Break. Quarter 2 also has Classical Character Day and our first Field Trip to look forward to! We'll finish off the quarter with the famous Robin Hood Celebration. Students should be diligent to complete all their work prior to these fun privileges!
-Please send students with the Dover Classics copy of "Robin Hood" for Q2.
-Make sure students are studying regularly throughout the quarter: review History chapters read in class, review Science spiral notes, study Roots definitions flash cards, study multiplication flash cards on missed problems from Rocket Math tests, and reading 6-8, 150 page or more books with journal entries.
-We will no longer check agendas for a signature, but please still ask to see their agendas and homework for correctness.
-All late assignments will receive a 10% deduction per day late in Q2-4.
NEWS:
-Math Chapter 3 Test on 10/19. Be sure students are prepared for this test by studying their Green and Blue Math books and making corrections to missed problems. We will also collect the Blue book which is worth 100 homework points.
-10/25 Classical Character Day. Parents are encouraged to come to school and read a beloved passage, poem or story book to their child's class. Contact the classroom teacher to set up a time to come in and read. Parents may also choose to dress up as a favorite story character. Students may dress as Classical Character from a Literary selection. No popular culture characters turned into books. The Fourth Grade Team will dress from "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" if you'd like to match that theme. We are also asking Classroom Parents to organize class-wide snack on this day.
-Wednesday, October 18th HAPPY BIRTHDAY 4B TEACHER, MS. MUNYAN!!!
CURRICULUM:
ELA:
The first poem of Quarter 2 is "Beowulf". It is due on November 3rd, but students may perform as early as they choose.
Beowulf background- Beowulf was a Danish warrior before there was a Denmark. Written between 700-1000 AD, takes place in roughly 925 AD. Beowulf serves the king Hrothgar, and helps him get rid of an ogre who was a descendent of biblical Cain. He then defeats the ogre’s mother, a water witch, and is finally mortally wounded defeating a dragon once he becomes king for a time. Scyld Scefing (Shield Sheafson) was the great-grandfather of Hrothgar, an orphan who became king because of his skill as a Viking warrior. Vikings would have fought in plain clothes with a wooden shield and sword, meant to end a fight in one or two blows. The mead hall mention in the poem has also been found.
**Scholars will read "Beowulf" in 8th grade at CPA.
LITERATURE 4A finishes Pollyanna and all will begin "Robin Hood" in W1. This is to complete the tale and set us up for Robin Hood Essays at the end of Quarter 2. Be sure your students have the correct edition of Robin Hood (Dover Evergreen Classics) prepared on day 1 of Quarter 2.
We continue our COMPOSITION program with practicing two different parts of the 5 paragraph essay. The first is a graded attempt of writing an introductory paragraph about Charlemagne. The second is the form for a conclusion paragraph. We will take notes in our Red Spiral.
In GRAMMAR, we take notes in the red spiral on Compound and Complex sentences. Students should refer to these notes to do homework and writing assignments to include these types of sentences in summary and essay writing for the remainder of the year.
In LATIN AND GREEK ROOTS we will take no new roots this week, keep studying roots definitions cards. Review missed problems from Q1W9 test.
For PHILOSOPHY, we will make Q2 goals based on what we want to improve on from 1st Quarter.
Math:
In Math, we will review Chapter 3 concepts on Wednesday in preparation for the test on Thursday. Once graded tests are returned in W2, students should complete test corrections and submit. On Friday we will begin working on Order of Operations leading into our Chapter 4 unit on solving Word Problems using all four operations.
Order of Operations Intro Khan Academy
History:
In History, we will use our time to construct and edit our Charlemagne Introductory Paragraphs.
Science:
In Science, we begin our Meteorology Unit with the Water Cycle and Hydrology.
Remember, the blog is updated weekly. Be sure to come back frequently to see any upcoming events or changes in fourth grade.