WEEK OF JANUARY 17th

SPELLING BEE!
THANKS TO ALL OUR SPELLERS FOR A TERRIFIC JOB!
Garret Heyerman was our winner and Jenn Eastmann was our runner-up. They will go on to the regional bee at Bluestar Elementary in February! Congratulations!

CONFERENCES:
Thank you for coming to speak with me about your child. If I did not meet with you, Thursday I sent home your child's SRI reading score in an envelope.

Released Time is Wednesday January 26th.

Math:
We had many concepts to practice last week. Identifying polygons, regular and irregular polygon and various figures such as quadrilaterals, parallelograms and trapezoids were some of these. We also identified various triangles as well as measuring their angles and those of quadrilaterals.
We worked with fractions in math RTI this week-these lessons focus on mastery of 4th grade outcomes.We have been reviewing past concepts and will continue to do so.

Reading:
We continue to stay in the nonfiction genre practicing concepts such as skimming, searching for context clues, comparing and contrasting, vocabulary building, and various comprehension strategies. 
We have been using the Storyworks magazine as well as articles about civil rights and Martin Luther King as we studied about him on Monday. We also read a historical fiction piece about slavery entitled, Now Let Me Fly and practiced determining importance. We have had some good discussions about these moments in our country's history. These are topics that are relevant to social studies curriculum as well.

Writing:
We read the book, A Symphony of Whales which is based on a true story. Thousands of Beluga Whales were trapped when ice began closing in around them near Alaska. A Russian ice breaker came to assist, but the whales had to be led out using music since they were afraid of the ship's loud engines. Students are now writing narratives about rescuing an animal and incorporating the use of music to do so.

Science: 
We discussed Newton's first law of motion and will perform experiments to demonstrate it. We reviewed vocabulary and also measured force in newtons using a spring scale.


Social Studies:
Material is was focused on the southern colonies this week.