April 28th Update

I have great news! We found the missing Harriet Tubman book, thanks to some special student sleuths in the classroom. Whew!

Our Math Unit 11 is progressing well. This is another short Unit, the culminating test is planned for next Friday, May 7th. I will email the study guides by the end of this week. I will also be updating the gradebook this weekend, so be sure and visit http://www.mygradebook.com/ by Sunday to check your child's 4th quarter grades.

P.K. Yonge's annual Z to A Countdown to the last day of school will officially begin on May 6th. If you were not here last year, this list is a fun way to help keep those last 26 days novel and exciting. Each day has an alphabet letter assigned to it in which you can wear, do, or eat something that goes along with that letter.

Class Update - April 25th

Dear families,

Our 4th grade Scholastic Bookfair Fundraiser was a great success this past week, thanks to all the volunteers who donated their time and services! We couldn't have done it without you! Your help is truly appreciated!

The students are super excited about our journey into 21st century learning, having initiated a "paperless" Reading / Social Studies block. They are now looking up information, reading about specific topics, answering questions and recording their thinking all on the laptop computers. It has been a work-in-progress, but I am truly impressed how quickly the students have acquired the necessary skills to become successful in these tasks. Likewise, I have noticed that they take ownership and are more engaged in their learning.

We will begin learning about the struggle for Civil Rights this week, and will then begin our 20th Century Projects. These are the big end-of-year, culminating projects that the students will spend most of May researching and composing so that they'll be ready to present by June. The students and I have already been discussing in class the possibilities for project choices. Students must choose a topic which answers at least one of these guiding questions:

1. How does war/conflict change people?
2. How are people affected by conflict and change?
3. How does conflict and change affect me?

At home, you can talk with your child about what he/she has learned this year in regards to war and conflict. We have covered the American Revolution, the Civil War, World War I, Great Depression, World War II , and will have explored the Civil Rights movement, too. There are so many parallels to these conflicts, which is what I am hoping they will take away from this year. This project will be focused on the 20th century - so the students will have to take what they've previously learned about conflict, apply it to their new learnings, select a topic based on one of the 3 questions, and synthesize it all into a deep and meaningful project. It will be difficult. Therefore, once the research begins, your child will need all the cooperation from both home and the classroom.

For that reason, home reading journals will be temporarily suspended. I will be giving the students one or two tasks a week related to their research studies, and will post the assignment on the blog. The weekly "home reading" will be the activity on the class blog site, with the student completing the activity and responding on the blog. I will give you a more detailed description when this version begins, the week of May 2nd. Hence, there will be no HRJ's this week (April 26-30).

In Math, we wrapped up the Symmetry Unit (Unit 10) by taking the test on Friday, April 23rd. On Monday, it's off to Unit 11, which covers Geometric solids, and revisits addition and subtraction of negative/positive numbers from the last unit. There is a Credits & Debits Game (have your child play the advanced version) on the EM Games website, which will be a great practice! The link is:
https://www.emgames.com/kids/kids_login_once.html

The deadline for Space Camp money was Friday, April 23rd. If you have not turned in your payment, please do so by Tuesday afternoon, 4/27, at the latest. Please feel free to contact me or Ms. A if you have any questions about the field trip. Chaperones will be receiving an email in a couple of weeks (from another company which NASA contracts) in order to get background information for individual security clearances.

I have a request:
During our Civil War studies, I checked out several books from the Alachua County Library to bring to the classroom as extra resources for students as the began their research into their projects. I have received a notice from the library that one book is overdue/missing:

• Harriet Tubman, Secret Agent : How Daring Slaves and Free Blacks Spied for the Union during the Civil War / written by Thomas B. Allen

The library is charging me $26.00 for the book, and I have searched all over the classroom. Could you have your child double check at home to see if it might be there? I greatly appreciate your help! I know that many students had Harriet Tubman as a main topic or a subtopic for their Civil War project, and the book might be lying around somewhere unnoticed.


This week's Specials' Schedule:

• Monday - March Of Dimes Walk-a-Thon
  
• Tuesday - PE
• Weds. - none
• Thursday - Music
• Friday - Art
  

Future upcoming events:

• PK Yonge Performing Arts: Curtains Performance - April 29,30 @ 7pm
• Teacher Appreciation Week: May 3rd - 7th
• PK Yonge Performing Arts: Curtains Performance - May 1 @ 2pm, 7pm, May 2 @ 2pm
• Space Camp Field Trip: Friday, May 28th - Saturday, May 29th