News from the Class

Greetings! 
    So we finished our first complete week of school!  Yay!  The class is doing so well with our routines and their ability to follow class guidelines that help them learn.  Yay 4/5 B!

    Reminder:  Our first field trip to Landmark College for the Puppet Show is on September 26th, a Wednesday.  Please send in the $5 for your child’s ticket if you have not already,  or email me if there is any problem regarding this. 

    This week in school we continued the class reading of The Trumpet of the Swan.  I have incorporated many other subject areas into this reading.  We have worked on writing haiku poems about trumpet swans, started looking at maps to learn and review map skills, worked on aspects of fiction verses non-fiction, and also are honing the skills needed to write a chapter summary.  Most if not all of the students have completed their swan habitat models as well.  We are enjoying the book and learning quite a lot about trumpet swans. 
    We did our first 5 minute write in Writing this week, and also wrote a haiku poem in that journal booklet.  Ms. Deb has been putting a haiku poem on the board each day for us to read and reflect on.

    Our 4th grade math class has been working in factors and arrays, as we set the context for working on multiplication.  Many of the students are very good with their multiplication combinations (facts).   Our array work basically helps explain what multiplication is as we learn about factors, multiples, squares, prime and composite numbers.  The 5th grade class is exploring number concepts as well.  Please talk to Karen Saunders if you would like more specific details of that group or you have any questions of the 5th grade math class.

    Our overall science unit at this point includes adaptations and habitats (4th grade) and will also include the 5th grade ecosystems.   We will look more in depth at the habitats and ecosystems around the trumpet swans for these units starting next week.  As I mentioned above, I started working with maps for social studies, and we started with an overview of the world map, the U.S. map, and then began some map reading and legend work on a map of the Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in Montana....(guess what, a refuge for Trumpet Swans is there).  Well, it is all related!  We have also been visited by the new Thai intern, and we will soon be having her come to the class for weekly sessions.

    Ok, so that’s all the news for this week.  Have a great weekend and enjoy the sunny weather!

                            Mr. B and Ms. Deb!