A4 News: September Upon Us

Things continue to get underway as we aim towards Fall - though it looks like we might still have some summer days heading our way.

Last week we began using the purple Home folder and the Student Planner. Everyone is becoming successful in bringing back completed homework with parent signatures. Thank you! I believe that helping your child get off to a good start helps to create good habits that will benefit them for years to come.

The purple Home folder and Student Planner will go back and forth to school Mon - Thur. Then on Fridays, we will load up the Red Friday Folder to bring home papers from the week. Any papers with hole punches need to be returned to school, as we will be collecting them in our big binder portfolios. It will be nice to have all the math quizzes and spelling tests and such in the same place. This allows us to keep records and see growth over time. Please sign the blue reflection card and return the Red folder on Mondays WITH the 3-hole punched papers (or next day after a weekend). You may keep any non-hole punched papers at home.

Once our routine is up and moving, among the 3-hole punched papers, you will find the Reflection Card, Spelling quiz, Math Quiz called the "Weekly Review" and Time for Kids Quiz on a regular basis.

It is your child's responsibility to bring these things to your attention and ask for your signature (it is not your job to go digging through their backpack), however, supporting their early efforts with reminders and helping to set up a routine is helpful and encouraged.

Also in the folder this week, you will see a recent multiplication assessment. Please note your child's number correct and the time. We will continue to take this assessment weekly to document our growth. It is my hope that working with the XtraMath.org program, these will increase in # correct and decrease in time needed. Generally speaking, at a 4th grade level, the mastery of 30 problems in under 5 minutes is a very appropriate goal.

In our daily math we have launched back into multiplication and using our conceptual knowledge and understanding of multiplication to help us build strategies for efficiency to build fact fluency. For instance we understand that 3 X 5 means 3 groups of 5 OR can be 5 groups of 3, but if we do not have the automaticity to say 15, then we need to find an efficient method to get us there, such as counting by 3's or counting by 5's or visualizing that you can think of 3 flower pots with 5 flowers in each. The more we work with this, the more they are exposed, the more strategies will click, but it is important that they work on it daily, your help is vitally important! Please help support & encourage XtraMath.org, flashcards, or other fun Apps and websites.

Just a few reminders:

* I do offer a morning snack moment, but I ask that they have a healthy choice - "brain food". Any fruits and vegetables, crackers, cheese, yogurt, pretzels are all OK.
No Nuts/tree nuts OR sesame seeds.

*Mondays are early lunch (11:10) and early release days (2:45)
*Wednesdays are our Library book exchange days
*Thursdays we have afternoon snack - eat a good breakfast!
*Fridays we have early KW at 8:35

*Picture Day - Thursday, Sept. 17th
*Thursday, Sept. 17 - Go-to-School-Night (GTSN) 3rd & 4th grades will present from 8:00 - 8:50. We will begin in the Auditorium and then move into the classroom.

I'm looking forward to seeing you all on Thursday evening.

Please page through some pictures below to see what we've been up to.

Idea Lab/Science -

We have been working with electronic pieces called littleBits as part of our foundation for some of the work we will be doing in the Idea Lab. For a picture clip from Mr. Burleson click here:
https://goo.gl/photos/DF6Y7j2FV2WrDa7k7