Welcome Back!

Welcome back! I hope everyone had a great holiday. The kids had some great stories to share about their winter break! It seems like most of the class is back to being healthy. Let's hope we can keep the illness at bay.

January is a great time to start fresh. We are beginning many new units this month.

Math- We are beginning our equations and word problems unit. The students will learn about algebra topics and the order of operations. They will also learn to solve very in depth, multi-step, multi-operational word problems. At the end of the unit they will study factors and prime numbers as well.

Science- January is a science month! The kids are very excited to being our Ocean unit. We will tie this unit into writing as well. The students will each pick and ocean animal to research. They will create a five paragraph report on that animal. They will get to choose a creative way to present their findings to the class along with their essay.

Spelling Bee- We will be doing an all class spelling bee on Friday. The students will be getting a list today to study at home if they would like. Everyone will take part in the classroom spelling bee. We will have two winners from our class move on to the 4th grade finals. The two winning students from the entire 4th grade will represent us in the all school spelling bee on January 23.

Reading- We are continuing to work on CAFE strategies for reading comprehension, accuracy, fluency, and vocabulary. Our listening to reading groups are just finishing up their books. They read either "Hatchet",  "Flush", or "Henry Huggins". 

Next, we are going to be starting a literature circle project where students will choose a book that has been made into a movie to read with a group. After the books have been read and studied, the students will watch the movie that is based on their book. They will write a small paper comparing the book and the movie.

In the next few weeks, the students will be tested on the Scholastic Math Inventory (SMI), the Scholastic Reading Inventory (SMI), and AIMS Web (fluency).

Stay Warm!

Ms. Cavanaugh