4D: La clase de estrellas

Qu hemos hecho?
From the desk of Sr. Doudna ~ Religion: In the past month during religion we have been working around our theme for the year, LIVE THE FAITH. How have we lived the faith? Through discussion and work with our We Believe textbook, we have discovered that turning away from God can cause us to sin. This means that we must be good disciples of Christ and use our conscience to make the right decisions. English Language Arts: Over the past month, we have covered stories from our Journeys textbook including Akiak, Grandfathers Journey, and Finding the Titanic. With these stories we have used many graphic organizers, or visuals to help us understand a text, for greater reading comprehension. Weekly spelling tests with Spelling City are also included in our program to build students spelling and vocabulary skills. Spelling City makes it fun to learn new words! Lectura: We have begun the full swing of Spanish vocabulary and comprehension using stories from the Trofeos curriculum including Oficial Buckle y Gloria, Pepita Habla Dos Veces, Nate, el Gran detective de San Francisco, and now we are working with El Sueo de basquetbol de Allie. We have incorporated stations into our lectura where one station focuses on Spanish vocabulary, another is independent comprehension practice using the Trofeos workbook, and the third station allows students to read to themselves or with a buddy. Ciencias: Our focus in our Science unit has been on the process of weathering and erosion. We spent the first week learning how water can cause rock to disintegrate and weather away. Later, we began a process building a sandblaster using shoe boxes in which the kiddos could blow through a straw to see the process of wind erosion on sand. We decided that sand + wind = wind erosion. Math (Mrs. Tuthill): It has been great working with the 4th graders this year in math. We began the year with Mad Minutes, which review basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division

facts. As the students reach their goal three times in a row, they move on to the next challenge. As many of the students have discovered, brushing up on basic facts is important and not as easy as they thought it would be! They are already making great progress though! In our main studies we have been working on addition and subtraction of larger numbers, estimation, algebraic equations and word problems. We just began a quick review of telling time and eased into elapsed time just today. Each lesson is differentiated to fit your child's needs in reteaching, practicing, and enriching what they already know. I am looking forward to a great year! Mrs. Tuthill