Weekly Update 2/6/2017

Updates/Reminders: 

• Our field trip to the North Carolina Legislative Building and the North Carolina History Museum is scheduled for tomorrow, Tuesday, February 7th. Please make sure that your child is at school by 9:15, as the bus will be leaving at 9:30 sharp! 
• Please support your child as our school raises money for the American Heart Association through Jump Rope for Heart!  Forms went home today.  
• Friday, February 10th is another early release day.  School will be dismissed at 1:15PM.  Please fill out this Google form: 
• https://docs.google.com/a/wcpss.net/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdWLS3jlfNu7K9fw_ykcww_sOqGEabZCgW-RSMIKeiyE081lw/viewform
• Our class will celebrate Valentine's Day briefly at the end of the day on Tuesday, February 14th by exchanging valentines.  They do not have to pass out valentines if they would prefer not to, however, if they choose to do so, they should have a valentine for every student in this class.  We currently have 23 students: Georgia, Saachi, Eva, Abigail B., Ethan, Savannah, Porter, Jack, Chris, Vincent, Vedant, Hrisha, Alex, Kelly, Jada, Brody, Abigail M., Jackson, Evelyn, Ved, Sydney, Holt, Kayla
• Our incredible PTA organizes a Science Go Round every year.  This year's event will be held on Thursday, February 23rd.  For this the classes get to learn about various science topics from volunteers, who come to talk to the children.  It is a very fun event and one that the students look forward to each year!
• Field trip paperwork for our trip to the coast went home with your child last week.  This field trip is scheduled for Thursday, April 27th and is always a favorite fourth grade memory!  We are hoping to have all field trip paperwork and payments received by February 20th.  If you have any questions or concerns about the trip, please feel free to contact me. 
• Our School Improvement Team wants your feedback!  Our school improvement team meets monthly to continuously monitor the progress of our students' achievement and our teachers' instructional practices.  Our school improvement plan goals are written to obtain a high level of student proficiency while meeting or exceeding student growth by focusing on the areas of increasing rigor, improving student's written responses, continuously providing interventions and progress monitor for students who need support, increasing student accountability and improving students' content vocabulary.   Please take a few minutes to take this brief survey and share with us your perspectives as parents.  Your feedback will help us determine areas where we are doing well and areas for improvement.   You can access the survey at http://tinyurl.com/SIPQ2ParentSurvey
• The Morrisville Science Fair is scheduled for Thursday, March 2nd from 6-8PM.  If your child is interested in presenting a project, they are to fill out the following form https://docs.google.com/a/wcpss.net/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe3Svr_19GV1A3Q6h017SbOgIDc85X24L-QOiN7MME5dYwAjg/viewform?c=0&w=1 to register for this event. 

What We Are Learning This Week:
Reading: 

This week, the students will continue to focus on reading the complex text of historical fiction.  The readers are all enjoying their historical fiction novels and doing a great job discussing them using support from the text. This week the students will finish their novels and focus on pairing them with nonfiction texts to help them deepen their understanding of that historical time period.  The students will take their first reading assessment on Monday, February 13th. 

Some specific mini-lesson topics this week will include:

   •  •Analyzing photographs and firsthand/secondhand accounts to deepen their understanding of historical fiction texts.

       •Determining the importance of parts that make us, as readers, stop and think.

       •Determining who has power, how did they get it, and whether or not power can change.

Questions You Can Ask Your Child At Home:

*What parts of your book make you stop and think?  What makes that part important?

*Who has power?

*How do they get it?

*Does the power change?

Writing: 

This week, the students will continue to work on opinion writing.  They will be working on writing their three body paragraphs that will support their thesis statement.  As the students construct their body it is very important that they include the Fabulous Five in each paragraph. 

Fabulous Five Must Haves in Each Nonfiction Paragraph:

1.Clear topic sentence that tells the main idea of your paragraph

2.At least 3-5 relevant details that will support the topic

3.Different transitional words throughout the paragraph

4.Content specific vocabulary

5.Concluding statement that sums up their paragraph in a new and different way from their topic sentence.

Questions You Can Ask You Child At Home:

*Tell me more about your 3 supporting paragraphs and how you used the Fabulous Five Must Haves

Math: 

This week, in math, the students will continue to focus on patterns.  They will be investigating geometric and numerical patterns in sequences and input/output charts.  The students will be responsible for finding the rule in given pattern sets and listing the features that they discover in that pattern.  On Wednesday, the students will be taking an assessment on creating and extending patterns. For the remainder of the quarter, the students will be working on fractions, with a strong emphasis on being able to draw pictorial representations of fraction/fraction models to show their thinking.  

Questions You Can Ask Your Child At Home: 

*What is the rule for the following pattern: 37, 32, 27, 22?

*What features does this pattern have?

*Can you create your own pattern using the rule divide 4?  What features would this pattern have?

*Can you create an input/output chart with a rule of multiply 3, add 2?

Social Studies: 

This week in social studies the students will learn about positive and negative incentives. They will learn about different types of incentives that are found in their community and how they can influence behavior. The students will also learn about the importance of creating a budget and how financial choices can lead to rewards or consequences. The students will have a quiz on Tuesday (February 14th) that will cover the economics topics that we have learned so far. It would be a good idea for the students to specifically review the following terms for the quiz: goods, services, human resources, capital resources, and natural resources.

Questions You Can Ask Your Child At Home: 

*Give me some examples of a positive and negative incentive.
*Which do you find more effective?
*How can choices that you make about money lead to rewards and consequences?