Dear Parents,
     Happy Thursday!! I hope everyone is having a good week.  Things are moving along very well in 4th grade.  They are working hard on completing their homework in the time that is given to them.  The homework has calmed down because things are becoming more routine and subjects are stretching out.  I am trying some new things in the classroom this week.  I am anxious to see some end results of the changes.  Please, keep encouraging your child to complete work and help me to be excited when they come home with no homework.

Language Arts - This week the student's read a play called The Power of W.O.W.!  It is a story about a minibus that is a library that travels outside the city. It is called Words on Wheels (W.O.W.)  It was a pilot program that  lost it's funding.  The kids who benefit from the W.O.W are sad and want to do something to try and save it.  They have a car wash to raise money.  A news reporter catches wind of it and does a report on it.  The kids are swamped at car wash and people start just donating money.  They are able to save W.O.W. for a long time.  It is a great story about hard work paying off.  We are discussing sentence fragments and run-on sentences this week.  In spelling the list covered long O and short O.  Small groups worked on the "theme" of some short stories, vocab, and whether groups of words were a complete sentence or a fragment.  Remember end of week test is tomorrow!! Study the spelling and vocab for tomorrow.

Math - We worked on rounding numbers again this week.   We also moved on to renaming numbers. We are learning other ways to say numbers or to represent numbers.  They learned why when we talk about years we say 18 hundreds (1800"s) instead of 1,800.  We also learned that 560 is 56 tens instead of 560.  We drew pictures to represent these numbers also.  We spent a couple days on it.  During center time, we worked on rounding and renaming numbers.  We will next move onto adding whole numbers.  We will be adding large numbers and reviewing the regrouping process.

Social Studies - We are starting chapter 2.  This chapter will cover government and economics of our country.  I am trying a new model called the Frayer model with vocabulary words. I have chosen 12 words out of the 20 that they will apply this model to and have group discussions.  They will be doing more than memorizing the words.  This requires them to actually understand the meaning of the words and be able to show me they know it.  The group discussions will help them to share what they know and for someone who struggled with a word, they will have better learning experience because they are listening to their peers conversations.  We had first group discussion today on first 2 words and I like it!! I will wait to see if the end result and then apply this same strategy to our language arts words.

Hello!

We are in need of parents and students of St. Malachy School to ride on our float this Friday.  Please let your child’s teacher know if you and your child are willing to ride.  We are waiting for information from the High School about the location of our float.  We will meet at 1:45 at the location.  Please watch for the location in the Thursday newsletter on our website http://www.crestonstmalachy.org/   Following the parade we will unload at the Holy Spirit Church Parking lot.  It is very important that all children are picked up and not left unattended.  If you are willing to stay with students until all students are picked up please let your child’s teacher know that as well.

Thank you for your continued support of St. Malachy School Activities,

Jennifer Simmons

Principal

I hope all of you have a great weekend.  Enjoy the weather.  

God Bless, 
Mrs. Sickels