4th Grade News for D4

updated 1-7-13

Hello Parents, I just wanted to tell you Happy New Year, and I'm so glad to be back and teaching your children. Today was a great first day back for all of us, and I was greeted with a lot of smiling happy faces.

CURRICULUM NEWS

Language Arts

We are starting the stories in Theme 3 of our Language Arts Adoption. As we read the stories, we will be discussing their themes and using them as part of our work with response to literature writing. This genre asks students to state the theme or big idea of a story, briefly summarize the story, and use events from the story to prove their theme. We will still have our weekly story tests on Fridays. In grammar we will continue to work on verbs. We will have weekly spelling as well.

Math

We are moving into Unit 4 in our math books. Chapter 10 focuses on division. Students will divide two digit numbers with and without remainders. Chapter 11 covers dividing three and four digit numbers and money. Chapter 12 explores finding factors, multiples, prime numbers, and composite numbers. We should be ready to quiz chapter 10 on Tuesday, January 15.

Science

We are taking a break from science.

History

We are finishing up the second part of Unit 2 over the next couple of weeks. Students will learn about how California became a part of Mexico and how life changed as the Mexican Rancho Period of history began. We should be ready to test lessons 5, 7, and 8 of Unit 2 on January 18.

Field Trip Information

Our field trip to the Olivas Adobe in Ventura is on Thursday, January 10. Here we will tour an adobe ranch house and learn what life would have been like living on a rancho. The students will grind corn, make tortillas, rope a bull, and stomp in a mud pit to make adobe bricks. We will leave school by 9:00 and return by 12:30 for this field trip.

Students should wear sunscreen as the field trip is mainly outdoors.

They should also wear shorts and clothes that can get dirty as they will be walking in a mud pit.

School Spelling Bee

Congratulations to our class spelling bee winners: Manas Khatore, Amanda Wooley, and Preston Gist. They will be representing our class in the La Mariposa School Spelling Bee after school on Wednesday, January 9.

We wish them the very best of luck.

La Mariposa Talent Show

The La Mariposa Talent show auditions will take place after school on Thursday, January 17 from 2:00-4:00 To audition, simply go online to our school website, print out the form, have your talent ready, and come to the auditions.

Dinner Dance

The annual La Mariposa Dinner Dance is coming up on February 23. If you have never been, I can tell you from experience that this is an extremely fun night out that greatly helps our school.

To make the night successful, we need some help ranging from business sponsors, auction items, set up, etc.

Go online to see all the ways you can help make this event a success for our students.

We have SMART boards in our 2nd and 3rd classrooms and a computer lab teacher this year thanks to last year’s dinner dance.

Save the Date

1/9 School Spelling Bee 3:15 in MPR

1/11 Olivas Adobe Field Trip

1/15 PTA Meeting 9:15 am

1/17 Talent Show Auditions

1/21 No School

1/26 Dirt Day Gardening Event at School