Happy 3 day weekend everyone!  This has been a good week here in room A215.  We finished up the M-STEP test by completing the math section of the test.  The kids worked hard and gave it their best shot.  I am proud of them.  We will be working on the Discovery Education Reading and Math test next week.

Reading: We tackled concepts like flashback, allusions, personification, and poetic justice.  We found examples of each of these literary elements in books throughout the week.  They did a good job at identifying these concepts in their own fiction books too!

Math:  We tackled our last unit in math this week by looking at patterns and trying to analyze them using numbers and shapes.

Social Studies:We kicked off the week learning about the 5 Themes of Geography by using this song (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJJO0DnWbD8) .  If you play it, they might start singing along with it at home.   We have completed location (absolute and relative location) along with place in how to identify the physical characteristics of an area.

Writing:  This week we revisited the concept of Literary Essay with the story called Enemy Pie by Derek Munson.  I felt it was necessary to tackle this topic one more time since a group of kids struggled with this idea in writing.  Kids worked closely with their groups identifying the theme/heart of the story and came up with three reasons why they support their theme/heart.  Great job kids!

Upcoming Dates in room A215:

Tuesday, May 30: Discovery Reading test, ALL classroom books/library books due back.

Wednesday, May 31: Discovery Math Test, ALL iPads and original charging cords due back to school

Thursday, June 1:  Chicago Trip 6:45 AM-9:00 PM

Friday, June 2:  Bocce Ball Day (wear sunscreen, bring water and whatever else for snacks, books, cards but no electronics)

Tuesday, June 6: Teachers vs. Students Dodge Ball Game 2:30-3:15

Wednesday, June 7: Trip to Front Porch (Free ice cream thanks to Kelly Larson).  LAST Keller Cash Raffle.  4th Grade Celebration Night – 6:30 PM SLMS auditorium (students line up by 6:25)

Thursday and Friday, June 8 and 9: 1/2 Days

Important Dates

Tuesday and Wednesday May 23-24 MSTEP Testing – Math

Thursday, May 25 and Tuesday, May 30 – Discovery testing

Thursday, June 1 – Chicago Trip 6:45 AM-9:00 PM

Friday, June 2 – Bocce Ball Day

Wednesday, June 7 – 4th Grade Celebration Night – 6:30 PM

Thursday and Friday, June 8 and 9 – 1/2 Days

We had another busy week!  I think that between now and the end of the school year, every week will be busy!  There are some pictures below from the GVSU field trip.

Reading:  This week we finished our unit 4 on Historical Fiction and took the final test on Thursday.  Students had to read a short story about a boy who has hobos visit his house during the Great Depression and answer questions about character, technique, and theme.

Writing:  We are working on our literary essays by adding direct quotes from the stories we read, using the technique of parallel lists in our paragraphs, and writing an introduction paragraph including a hook, story title and author, thesis, and 3 reasons.

Math: This week we finished our unit on measurement.  We are testing on unit 13 on Monday.    We are also working on a cumulative test on these past 12 units during our iTime at the end of the day.  Next week we will begin our unit on angles.

Social Studies: We began making our product posters in art class and then discussed the concepts of supply and demand and what those ideas do to the price of an object.  We then talked about how a dollar travels from businesses to people and back to businesses.   The market day will be on Friday, May 12.  Once you have made the 12-15 items, be sure of the cost per item that is was to make and then determine a price to charge.  Keep track of what was spent on those 12-15 items for our expense sheets.  The commercialism are due on Friday, May 5th.

Important Dates

Friday, May 5: Crazy Hair Day for $1 toward LLS Campaign, Commercials due for Market Day project.

Friday, May 12: Visit SL Intermediate School and Market Day

Tuesday through Thursday May 16-18 AND May 23-25: STEP Testing

Tuesday and Wednesday, May 30 and 31: Discovery Education testing

Thursday, June 1: Chicago Trip 6:45 AM-9:00 PM

Friday, June 2: Bocce Ball Day and STEM Rocket Launch

Wednesday, June 7: 4th Grade Celebration Night – 6:30 PM

Happy Friday,

Our first week back from spring break was a success.  We accomplished a lot of things from learning to enjoying a good time while swimming.
Math: We walked through comparing decimals by reasoning about their sizes, added fractions with denominators of 10 and 100 by using equivalent fractions, solved word problems involving money using fractions and decimals, took our online practice test, reviewed material, and got prepared for the Unit 12 test on Monday.

Reading:  The week’s mini-lessons have been on self-assessing using qualities of a strong interpretation by looking at themes of stories, turning to primary sources to better understand the history of our historical fiction books by researching the events on our iPads.  I also got to spend some time reading more of our read aloud, Number the Stars.  We left off today with Annemarie taking a secret basket to her Uncle Heinrick’s boat that held some very important materials, a hankie.  Students are curious on why the hankie is so important and were left to imagine why.

Social Studies:  We finished up or last project from the government unit with the Bill of Rights cartoons.  Those should have come home this week for your enjoyment.  We started our new unit off on Economics by discussion what goods and services are: a good is something you buy and consume, a service is something that someone does for  you.

Writing:  We started our Unit 4: The Literary Essay this week by discussing how to grow ideas about a text by using thought prompts, asking questions of texts, and studying characters (their traits, motivations, struggles, changes, and relationships).

Lots of End of Year Important Dates:

Monday, April 17 – Orange Out for Leukemia.  Wear as much orange as you can.

Tuesday, April 18 – Talent Show 7PM at the Middle School auditorium

Friday, April 21 – Swimming for gym (9:55-11:15)

Friday, April 21 – “Born in China” movie field trip (cold lunch needed) more info to come on 4/17

Wednesday, April 26 – Swimming (8:55-10:15)

Friday, April 28 – GVSU Science field trip (Cold lunch needed) more info to come. Hawaiian Day

Friday, May 5 – Crazy Hair Day for $1 toward Leukemia

Friday, May 12 – Visit SL Intermediate School and Market Day

Tuesday through Thursday May 16-18 AND May 23-25 MSTEP Testing

Thursday, June 1 – Chicago Trip

Friday, June 2 – Bocce Ball Day

Wednesday, June 7 – 4th Grade Celebration Night – 6:30 PM

Thursday and Friday, June 8 and 9 – 1/2 Days

Hello Amazing Families,

Have a great spring break with your families.  I can’t wait to hear about all the wonderful trips and stories from the week.

Upcoming Dates:

4/31-4/9: Spring Break

4/10: School Resumes

4/17-5/5: Student Council Leukemia and Lymphoma Society (LLS) Service Project campaign. More info to come soon.

4/17: “Orange Out” LLS Campaign in honor of Tegan Rose.

4/28: Holmes Spirit Day: Hawaiian Day

5/5: Crazy Hair Day: $1 donations to LLS.

Here are some pictures from a St. Patrick’s Day QR Code Scavenger Hunt put on by the Holmes Student Council.  Kids had a blast using their iPads to find clues about St. Patrick’s Day.

Keller’s Class enjoyed another fun, fantastic raffle.  It is fun to see kids earn Keller Cash and it is also fun to seem them try to win some fun prizes.  Thanks for those families who donated to make these raffles possible.  

ART News: Your child may have already or will be finishing their ceramic projects in the coming weeks.  The Holmes Art Room is looking for donations of newspaper so our clay pieces can be carefully take home.  If you have some to donate send with your child to drop off in the art room.

March 9, 2017

Hello 4th grade families,

Your child will have the wonderful opportunity to sing, move, and play the recorder with the West Michigan Symphony Orchestra as part of our Link Up Concert on Wednesday, April 12th at 12:30pm at the Frauenthal Theater in Muskegon. See the details for this special trip below.

Wednesday, April 12th

Dress nicely please. Girls – dress, skirt, or nice pants Guys – nice jeans/khakis – shirt with a collar

Lunch will be served at 11:15am that day.  Make sure you have your recorder (instrument).

Buses depart Holmes at 11:40am

Concert 12:30-1:30pm

Arrive back at Holmes by 2:10pm.

We are allowed to bring 2 chaperones per classroom on this trip. Chaperones will ride the bus, help us stay together as we walk from the parking lot to the theater (many area schools participate and there will be a lot of kids!), and sit with us while we sing, play, move, and listen to the orchestra. Please email Mrs. Ireland to volunteer – first come first serve.   nireland@springlakeschools.org

In past years, there has been additional ticketed seating for an audience of family members who are not chaperones. We are sorry that this is not available this year. The number of schools who are participating has increased and there is no additional seating in the Frauenthal Theater on April 12th for the 12:30pm concert.

Your child WILL have a music performance on June 7th at 6:30pm in the Middle School Auditorium.

Fun, fantastic Friday room A215.  I hope you are enjoying this cold, snowy day.  Thank you parents for attending conferences this week and allowing me to share your child’s highlights of 4th grade with student-led conferences.   It is fun to see your child shine with excitement when sharing their academic progress with you while sitting in the captain’s chair.

Reading:  We wrapped up our Unit 3: American Revolution last week and spent some time getting back into some of our favorite fiction stories all the while stopping and jotting in reading journals about the characters, events, and more.  I added into their reading time some Time for Kids informational articles to build their background knowledge on key issues that are all around us.  We talked about how to use the articles to support our answers in order to to complete the TFK quizzes using test taking strategies.

Math: We finished up our unit 9: Understanding addition and subtraction of fractions with a final test this week.  Kids did a great job on this unit.  We started our last fraction unit and discussed extending multiplication concepts to fractions by realizing fractions as multiples of unit fractions with models and multiplying a fraction by a whole number using models.

Writing:  We are continuing our unit on Bringing History to Life by using the American Revolution topic.  Kids continue to plug away at their informational writing books by adding text features to their 5 chapters and adding quotations from first person point of view and other books.  We talked about how text features add ‘pop’ to their writing to point out key features.  We spent some time talking about how quotes can add more information to each book by accentuating the central idea in that chapter.

Social Studies:  We spent some time wrapping up the preamble to the U.S. Constitution by completing an activity on digital read works.  Check out your kids progress on informational articles by asking them to show you their work.  We talked about the United States different kinds of government in popular sovereignty and limited government.  Popular sovereignty means that the power and authority of the government comes from the people.  Limited government means the national government does not have absolute authority.

Dates to Know:

Friday, March 10 afternoon and Monday, March 13 evening: Parent Teacher Conferences: These will be a student-led conference time.  Please make sure your child is available to come with you during your scheduled conference time.

Friday, March 17: Keller Classroom Raffle

Friday, March 17: Holmes Spirit Day, wear green in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.  There will be a scavenger hunt too!

Friday, March 31 through Sunday, April 9 : Spring Break

Happy Friday Everyone,

Reading: We wrapped up our unit 3 on the American Revolution with our post-assessment.  The assessment covered summarizing with evidence, point of view of text, and using two text to synthesis the information, and analyzing parts of a text in relation to the whole text.

Math:  This week students accomplished a lot in fraction land.  We covered adding and subtracting of fractions, modeling mixed numbers, and adding and subtraction of mixed numbers.  We will be taking our unit 9 test next week.

Writing:  The class is doing an amazing job at tying up all their loose ends when it comes to their American Revolution informational books.  Kids focused on the introductions and conclusions of each of the five chapters and then added an introduction and conclusion for the entire book.

Social Studies:  This week we started our new unit on Government.  As a class we talked about the constitution and how it fits to our government today, introduced the preamble of the constitution by discussing each of the parts, and then we are working on a preamble project where kids have to use pictures to describe each section of the preamble.   I can’t wait to share these with you at conferences next week.
Dates to Know:

Thursday, March 9 and Friday, March 10: Students have 1/2 days, noon dismissal.

Thursday, Friday, and Monday, March 9, 10, and 13 : Parent Teacher Conferences: These will be a student led conference time.  Please make sure your child is available to come with you during your scheduled conference time.

Friday, March 17: Keller Classroom Raffle

Friday, March 17: Holmes Spirit Day, wear green in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.  There will be a scavenger hunt too!

Friday, March 31 through Sunday, April 9 : Spring Break

Hi Amazing Team,

Reading:In reading this week we began researching our next topic from the Revolutionary War.   We began by reading easier texts on the topics we chose so that we had background knowledge to use to “file away” the new knowledge we gain as we read harder texts.  We need to read a chunk, pause and paraphrase.  Repeating these steps will help us take better notes.  We also reviewed how to find the main idea and discussed how authors many times put the main idea of longer texts in the introductions, the conclusions, and in the text features.  Finally, we talked about how we learn new vocabulary.  We have learned in previous grades that we can take apart the word and use context clues to find out the word.  As we read harder texts we should be able to know nuances of words.

Math:In math this week we are adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators and reducing the fraction to simplest form.

Social Studies:In social studies we watched the movie Ruby Bridges.  It’s the true story of her courageous role in the integration of New Orleans Public Schools.  We are creating quilt squares depicting words and images from what we have learned about slavery and civil rights this month to end our Black History Month conversation.  These will be on display at parent teacher conferences next month.

Writing: We continue to work on our informational books with the American Revolution.  Kids have been creating chapters with an All About Causes of the American Revolution prior to 1775, focusing on one cause of the revolution, first person point of view mini-story, essay about their cause of the revolution, and an All About section on one area after 1775.

Dates to know:

Thursday, March 9 and Friday, March 10: Students have 1/2 days, noon dismissal.

Thursday, Friday, and Monday, March 9, 10, and 13 : Parent Teacher Conferences: This will be a student led conference.

Friday, March 17: Keller Classroom Raffle

Friday, March 31 through Sunday, April 9 : Spring Break