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. Our family mostly stayed in town this year, but we went for an overnight to explore the historic Queen Mine in Bisbee and toured the Kartchner Caverns State Park (highly recommend!).
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 on December 6th. 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 this 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. If your child's paper has "late" on it, they did not receive full credit. Absent work has the amount of days absent to submit before being marked "late".
NEWS:
-10/30 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.
-Friday, October 18th HAPPY BIRTHDAYS 4B TEACHER, MS. MUNYAN and 4A TEACHER, MRS. ROBINSON!!!
CURRICULUM:
ELA:
The first poem of Quarter 2 is "Beowulf". Listen to it here.
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 Princess and the Goblin and all will begin "Robin Hood" in W2. This is to complete the tale and set us up for Robin Hood Essays at the end 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.
For PHILOSOPHY, we will make Q2 goals based on what we want to improve on from 1st Quarter.
Math:
In Math, we will finish and review Chapter 3 concepts in preparation for the test in W2. Once graded tests are returned in W3, students should complete test corrections and submit. After the Chapter 3 test we will begin working on Order of Operations leading into our Chapter 4 unit on solving Word Problems using all four operations.
Double Digit Multiplication Review
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.