Homework 12/16/15

Homework 12/16/15
Reading: Reading log, pg. 90 in workbook
Spelling: Spelling contract due Friday, test Friday
Math: Study Sheet, Study for test Friday
Science: Study for test tomorrow

Reminders:
- Tomorrow is $1 Christmas dress down day
- Faith partner optional gift exchange on Friday

Homework 12/15/15

Homework: Study, study, study!

Reading: Reading log
Math: Study for test Friday
Science: Study for test Thursday
Spelling: Contract due Friday, test Friday

I was not happy with the grades on our social studies test last week so I am making sure to give students less homework so they have plenty of time to study!

- Miss Rizzo

Friday News

Here's a look at what we did this week:

Math - We wrapped up Unit 3 this week by learning about how to check our answers using the inverse operation of a problem and how to using drawings to solve a problem. Next week will be spent reviewing all concepts taught in Unit 3 and taking our test.

Science - We continued to work with the periodic table of elements in science this week as we took a look at what mineral nutrients are in the foods and drinks that we consume. We also learned the seven most common elements in the universe and identified the characteristics of atoms, molecules, and compounds. With a much shorter unit than the solar system unit, we will be learning our last science lesson on Monday and will be taking our chemistry test next week!

Writing - After wrapping up our grammar portion on nouns, we are moving on to another writer's workshop! This workshop is all about explanatory writing. Students have all chose a "how to" to write about and most have finished their first draft. To kick off the unit, we read a book called "How to Catch Santa" so be aware that your children may have some new and creative ideas to catch Santa this year :).

Reading - Our story in reading this week was called "The Little Painter of Sabana Grande". Along with focusing on vocab, we also reviewed story elements. Students found the characters, setting, problem, and solution of the story with no problem!

Religion - Continuing in Advent, students "lit" their second candle on their paper advent wreaths Monday. They also paid a visit to Father Joyce, Father Joe or Father Peter on Wednesday for reconciliation. We discussed why it is important to go to reconciliation and talked about some of the sins that we could confess and try to work on. At the end of the week, we discussed the story of the Jesse Tree and read from a book about the Jesse Tree by Geraldine McCaughrean.

In other news:
Last week we started something called "Compliment Stockings". Each student has decorated a stocking that has been made into a pocket to receive compliments. A few times a week, each student draws a number out of a bowl to see who they need to write a compliment to for that day. They may also ask for more compliment cards if they wish to compliment another friend!

Speaking of friends, we have a new student joining our class next week! We are all very excited for her arrival and have discussed how important it is to be welcoming to our new friend.

Reminders:
- Breakfast with Santa this Saturday!

Have a great weekend!

- Miss Rizzo

Homework 12/10

Homework 12/10/15:

Reading: Reading Log, pg. 82
Spelling: Contract due tomorrow, study for test tomorrow
Math: P 3-13
Science: Lesson 25 Review
Social Studies: Study for test tomorrow

Homework 12/8/15

Homework 12/8/15:
Reading: Reading Log
Spelling: Contract due Friday
Math: P 3-12
Social Studies: Study for test Friday
Science: Lesson 23 Review

*Social Studies test is moved to Friday due to receiving the study guide a day late - Answer key is shown in pictures. Students had the option of bringing on SS textbook, but many chose not to. Test will be just like study guide with vocab switched around.

Reminders:
- Turtle night tonight, dress down day for Turtles tomorrow
- We are looking for a classroom rug! If you have one to donate, please let me know! Or if you know of a good place to purchase one, we have some classroom basket money from trivia night!

Homework 12/7

Homework:

Math: pg. 84 #5-18 (only do the problem, no estimating or inverse)
Reading: Reading log
Science: Bring in nutrition label
Spelling: Contract due Friday

Friday News!

I can’t believe it is already December! Here’s a look at what we did this week:

Math – Math this week focused on subtraction and addition equations. Students learned how to find the unknown variable in an equation. They did really well with this! Next week we will be wrapping up Unit 3!

Science – We started a new unit in science this week that focuses on chemistry. Students explored the periodic table and learned all about different elements that make up our universe.

Social Studies - In social studies this week, we wrapped up our unit on the start of America by reviewing all vocabulary words and concepts learned. Next week we will take our test!

Religion – With the first week of advent starting, students made advent wreaths out of paper. We discussed what each candle stands for and even lit the first candle with paper. Students watched different videos about the meaning of advent and made their own “What is advent?” posters.

Writing – Continuing to focus on grammar, students took their test on nouns. We have been working on plural nouns, regular and irregular, possessive nouns, and common and proper nouns.

Reading – This week’s story in reading was called “Moses Goes to a Concert”. The story was about a school of deaf children attending an orchestra concert. It was an inspiring story about being able to be anything you want. We focused on comprehension and finding the main idea. Students are constantly improving with their comprehension!

In other news, if you haven’t already heard, Santa delivered an elf on the shelf to our classroom this week! We named him Freddy. He has been keeping a close eye on our class! Pictures below.

Reminders:

- Turtles night on December 8th, dress down day for everyone who turns in a receipt

- Religion Nativity contest due Monday

Have a great weekend!

- Miss Rizzo

Homework 12/3/15

Homework:
Reading: Reading log, pg. 75 in workbooks
Spelling: contract due tomorrow, test tomorrow
Math: P 3-11

Homework 12/2/15

Homework:
Reading: Readin log
English: Study for noun test tomorrow
Math: Pg. 82 #10-21
Spelling: Contract due Friday

*Tomorrow is the last day for students to bring in money to shop at Santa's Workshop!

Friday News!

Happy Friday! Here's a look at what we did this week:

Math: Students are becoming subtraction masters! We've had a lot of focus on 3-digit subtraction and this week we moved on to subtracting across zeros. Every day we add up our reading log minutes and subtract them from our goal of 20,000 to figure out how many minutes we have left until we reach our goal, so students have already gotten pretty good at this!

Social Studies: With the start of America came many new inventions that changed the world! Students learned about the transcontinental railroad, the elevator, the light bulb, and the first car. Intrigued by the new inventions that advanced America, students came up with their own inventions to even further change today's world.

Reading: Reading this week focused on skills that help us become better readers. We are constantly reviewing how to answer comprehension questions after reading a selection and how to restate an answer to a question. Students are finally getting good at this! We also learned about antonyms and synonyms and made tri-folds with examples.

Writing: Continuing to work on grammar, this week we focused on common nouns, proper nouns, plural nouns, irregular plural nouns, and possessive nouns. Today we combined everything that we have learned this week to start a story about a time we were thankful making sure to use all the types of nouns we have learned about.

Science: We are finally wrapping up our astronomy unit! This week we learned about comets and meteors. We also completed our study guide. We will be taking our test on Monday, so make sure students are studying over the weekend!

Religion: We ended Chapter 5 in religion this week with our quiz today. We also spent time using the Columbian Mission Education Program were we are learning to have respect for all God's people. We discussed what it means to have dignity and human rights. Students made a picture of themselves and decorated it with words that represent our uniqueness. We are all children of God!

Reminders:
- Parent teacher conferences are on Tuesday!
- Report cards will be sent home on Monday
- Book fair will be open one last day on Monday and then during parent teacher conferences
- We have early dismissal per usual on Monday and 10:30 dismissal on Tuesday

Have a great weekend!
- Miss Rizzo

Ornament activity with our faith partners!

Weekly News 11/12/15

Week 13 of school already! Wow, time has been flying by! Here’s a look at what we did this week:

Writing – Now that we are all done with our personal narratives, we are focusing on grammar for a little while again. Students took a pretest on Unit 2 for grammar and most did pretty well! This week they learned how to distinguish between common nouns and proper nouns. We also spent Veteran’s Day writing thank you letters to Veterans.

Science – In science this week, we compared the amount of time it takes each planet to orbit the Sun. In order for student to be able to visualize the different orbits, we took a trip to the gym and had 9 students represent the Sun and the 8 planets. They each stepped at the same time and we were able to see which planets take the shortest amount of time to orbit the sun, and which take the longest.

Social Studies – Continuing on in our Unit about the start of America, we learned how communities started to become cities. Students learned vocabulary words such as industry, migration, immigrant, and discrimination. They also put on little skits/story lines about what life was like in the 1800s.

Religion – Jesus brings the good news! This week we focused on Jesus bringing the good news of the Kingdom of God. We also learned about people who became disciples of Jesus and discussed what words describe a good disciple.

Math – Math this week switched from addition to subtraction. Students are learning new strategies to understand why we sometimes have to borrow when we are subtracting multiple digit numbers. We learned all about how place value factors into subtracting, but we are also trying to focus on the standard algorithm so students are not getting confused (like they did with addition!).

Reminders:

- No school tomorrow

- Pep rally tonight

- Scholastic book fair is next week!

Have a great weekend!

- Miss Rizzo

11/11/15

Homework:
Spelling: Contract due tomorrow, test tomorrow
Reading: reading log
Math: pg. 72 #9-18 - no need to draw place value blocks
English: pg. 79 #6-20
Science: lesson 16 review

Homework 11/10/15

Homework:
Spelling: Spelling contract due Thursday, test Thursday
Math: P 3-6 in workbook
Reading: Reading log

Weekly News

Here's a look at what we did this week:

Math – Math this week has focused on adding three or more numbers and problem solving by drawing a picture to help. Many students are getting very good at adding larger numbers, but we still need to practice our basic math facts. Next week will lead us into subtracting with three digit numbers.

Science – Science this week was a lot of fun with our field trip to the Adler Planetarium! Students were able to explore different exhibits to extend their learning and see what they already knew about the solar system. We were also able to attend to great shows that made us feel like we were actually in space! In class, we continued our learning with terrestrial planets and gas giants.

Reading – Our story for reading this week, Spiders at Work, was a nonfiction story that told us all about the many spiders in the world and how some are helpful and harmful. We are focusing on comprehension, or understanding, of our reading and using complete sentences to answer comprehension questions.

Writing – Students wrote about a family hero for the 11^th ward essay contest and four were chosen to be entered. We also started to present our printed and published personal narratives! Students seem very proud of their work, but we are eager to move on after such a long unit!

Social Studies – After the American Revolution, colonists started to move west. Students are learning all about Lewis and Clark and the big westward movement of the early colonists.

Religion – Our new chapter in religion is all about Jesus, the Son of God. This week’s focus was on why God sent Jesus to us. Children learned the meaning of the name Jesus, and why we call Jesus the Messiah. We sequenced the presentation of Jesus in the Temple.

Reminders:

- No school tomorrow - teacher in service

- We are collecting box tops in hopes of winning a dress down day

- Parent teacher conference times were sent home in Friday folders

- Next week is spirit week!

Monday: Wear your favorite college sports t-shirt or jersey

Tuesday: Show your BCA bandit pride

Wednesday: Wacky Wednesday - dress crazy!

Thursday: Decorate your head to fit your style - Hawkeye's dress down

Have a great weekend!

- Miss Rizzo

11/4/15

Homework:
Spelling: Contract due tomorrow, test tomorrow
Reading: Reading log
Math: Pgs. 68-69 #4-9
Social Studies: Time Line WS

Reminders:
- Still accepting Trivia Night donations!!
- No school on Friday

11/3/15

We had a blast on our field trip today! Thanks to all of the parents who chaperoned. Not a lot of homework tonight due to the lack of instruction in the classroom.

Homework:
Spelling: Contract due Thursday
Reading: Reading log

Friday News 10/30

Happy Friday and happy Halloween eve!

Here's a look at what we did this week:

Math - We kicked off Unit 3 by learning how to use place value to add
3-digit numbers. Students explored the place value blocks as we
figured out that when we are adding two numbers and we get ten or more
one blocks, we can exchange 10 one blocks for a ten block stick. This
helped students understand why we carry the 1 when adding in standard
algorithm. So far, students are doing really well with Unit 3.

Social Studies - Students have been really interested in social
studies this week as we have started learning about the colonists and
the causes that lead up to the American Revolution. We made newspapers
discussing various colonial news such as early Jamestown, taxes, the
Boston Tea Party, and the American Revolution.

Science - In science this week we used paper strips to understand and
represent the relative distances between the planets. We are very
excited to go to the planetarium at the beginning of next week! We
also had a special treat when there was some left over dry ice from
Fall Family Fun night. Students experimented and explored what happens
when you mix dry ice and water and dry ice, water and dish soap.
(Pictures below)

Reading - Dream Wolf, our story this week, was a folk tale about a young boy who dreams of a friendly wolf who leads him home. We learned vocabulary with this story and focused on cause and effect.

Writing - Our personal narratives are almost all published! Yay!
Students enjoyed publishing this week as we brought lap tops into the
room and took a trip up to the computer lab to type and print our
final draft of our personal narratives. Some students are still
finishing up. We also wrote about a family hero for the 11th Ward
Democratic Party essay contest. Four students papers will be chosen
and submitted.

Religion - This week we focused on women of the Old Testament and how they showed their faith in God. We learned about Sara, Hannah, and Ruth.We also learned about Queen Esther and Blessed Teresa of Calcutta. We will have a quiz towards the beginning of next week.

Reminders:
- We are going on field trip to the planetarium next week Tuesday,
Please send your child to school with a sack lunch that is completely
disposable.
- We will still accept trivia night donations at the beginning of next week, please help out if you can!
- Friday, November 6th is a staff in-service day so there will be no school.

Have a great Halloweekend!

- Miss Rizzo

10/26/15

Homework:
Reading: Summarize Dream Wolf, reading log
Math: None - did not get to math today
Spelling: Contract due Friday - will be handed out tomorrow

Friday Newsletter 10/23/15

Here's a look at what we did this week:

Math – Unit 2 is officially all wrapped up! Now we are moving on to Unit 3, where we are learning how to use place value to add and subtract. So far, students are breezing through the beginning of our new unit.

Writing – Students are moving all in their personal narratives and many students are starting the publishing stage! We have learned all about the writing process: prewriting, writing, revising, editing and publishing. It is exciting to see students acting like real writers!

*Next week we will also be doing writing about “A Family Hero” for the 11^th Ward Democratic Party essay contest – please brainstorm possible people for your child to write about

Reading – The skill we have been focusing on in reading this week is comparing and contrasting. We read a story about a little girl who builds a sand mountain and compared and contrasted the sand mountain to the real mountain in the story. Students are doing a good job of using this new skill to dig deeper into the comprehension of a story.

Social Studies – Our new unit in social studies is all about how communities change over time. We have learned about the very first communities and students grouped up to present on the Native American city of Cahokia, Powhatan’s Village, the very first settlers from England, and the start of Jamestown. This unit has a lot of information in it and I am excited to dive in!

Science – We continued science this week with learning more about the planets in our solar system and students learned a fun way to remember the order of the planets: My Very Exhausted Mother Just Served Us Nachos – Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune

Religion – Along with learning about women from the Old Testament, we had a special guest come in this week that talked to us all about missions and showed us different nativity scenes from around the world.

A note on trivia night:

Trivia night is coming up on November 14^th. Our classroom basket theme this year will be New Year’s Eve/Day. If you are able, we are asking for $5 or more donations so we can fill our basket with fun treats to celebrate the New Year! Remember, all proceeds from trivia night go back to help the classroom.

Field Trip Information: We are planning another field trip with the fourth grade to the Alder Planetarium on Tuesday, November 3rd. I am very excited about this field trip as it will go along great with our astronomy unit in science! Field trip forms will either be sent home today or on Monday. They are due on Friday, October 30th. We will only need 4 chaperones for this field trip and I will choose at a first come, first serve basis when forms are turned in.

Reminders:

- Parent teacher conference forms are due by October 30^th

- Halloween candy may be brought in next week Friday, but it must be PEANUT FREE and there must be enough for all 24 of our students

- Halloween lunch forms were due today, if your child did not order a lunch, you must send them to school with a packed lunch on the 30^th as their will be no hot lunches served this day

Have a great weekend! Let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns!

-          Miss Rizzo