Hello, vacation!

Hi everyone,

You should have received a letter in the mail about an upcoming Health class for all of 4th grade students. The boys will be in one room with Mr. M and Mr. Williams. The girls will be in another room with Ms. Sieminski, Mrs. Lawless and Mrs. Reimer. The focus will be on puberty and the talk is tentatively scheduled for one class period during the week ending 4/9. More details about the exact date will follow.

Did you see the interesting math sheets that went home for homework this past week? We are working on 2-digit times 2-digit multiplication. We didn’t tackle it the “old school” way that I learned. The Singapore Math program teaches it a way known as “area model”. It reemphasizes number sense and makes it a lot less confusing – no need to carry numbers and add them. Check with your child if you need a tutorial : )

Over the vacation, I asked the class to read chapters 13-17 in their Hank Zipzer book and complete the questions. Soon after the return from vacation we will begin our next book, Little House on the Prarie, which ties in with our upcoming Social Studies unit on the Midwest and West.

The last piece of big news is that after vacation we will have an 8th student in the classroom! Please join us in welcoming Megan Tracey, who will be coming over from Ms. Sieminski’s classroom.

Have a WONDERFUL vacation! ~ Mrs. Lawless

5 more school days until vacation!

Our week started off with an all 4th grade field trip to see the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra at the Zeiterion Theater. Although we didn't agree as to what our favorite part was, we all agreed that it was a fun time!

This week in Math we sharpened our place value skills through the millions place. By working with a partner, we were randomly handed cards from 0-9 and had to decide where to place them in order to make the biggest number we could make. Should we take a chance and hope that we would get a 9 to place in the millions? Sometimes taking a chance paid off. Other times, not so much. We will certainly be playing more rounds of Place Value War (also known as Who's Greatest?)through the remaining of the year.

Next week promises to be an exciting one -- it is our week with the Promethean Board! SBS recently got one of these interactive whiteboards, and it is being sharing amongst our classrooms. Next week we plan on doing an introductory lesson as well as a lesson on Explorers with the help of the wonderful and always helpful Mrs. Donahue. Stop by after dismissal if you want to check it out.

Have a great weekend! ~ Mrs. Lawless

New Addition to Homework

Hi everyone,

We are adding the written retell component to our Read Naturally homework. We went over the guidelines today, and the class had a chance to score a re-tell that I wrote. I only scored 80 points! Looks like I will have to try it again!

Students know that a perfect score of 100 does not necessarily mean a retell will go on the Wall of Fame - but going above and beyond the requirements just might!

Writing a retell – how to score 100 points!*

Do you have a complete beginning sentence? 10 points
Do you have a capital letter & punctuation? 10 points
Are words that you could have found in the 10 points
story spelled correctly?

Do you have a complete middle sentence? 10 points
Do you have a capital letter & punctuation? 10 points
Are words that you could have found in the 10 points
story spelled correctly?

Do you have a complete ending sentence? 10 points
Do you have a capital letter & punctuation? 10 points
Are words that you could have found in the 10 points
story spelled correctly?

Did you include information from the story? 10 points



* Anything less than a score of 90 will need to be re-done