This Week

Students practice keyboarding skills three times per week for 15 minutes. Ask your 4th grader about it.

Tuesday we participate in planting the school garden. Wednesday is International Peace Day celebration. Tonight's homework is to work on the peace poems and decorate a peace symbol we've distributed. I was impressed with their planning and first drafts.

We're reviewing the first three vocabulary lessons and word lists this week. So most of this will be done in class.

I have been encouraging each student to make a list in his/her planner of the unique highlights for each day. We call this the Daily Reflection List or DRL. I hope this becomes a regular feature of your nightly interaction with your child. Today, for instance, the students enjoyed a presentation from the school librarian Mrs. Smay on the Sunshine State Books contest. Later I talked about an impromptu Christmas truce during World War I.

In math we're exploring multi-digit subtraction and addition. Our weekly times facts test scores are improving for everyone. We are finishing our study of Jamestown colony in history.

In Science we continue to explore what conducts or insulates electricity. Again ask a fourth grader to explain.

We're in our second week reading and carefully studying The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane. We plan some readers' theater presentations on some of the more exciting scenes. Students are encouraged to identify, in their own independent reading, passages that would also be appropriate and enjoyable to perform.

Technology and Art rotate for a series of twice a week for three weeks sessions. Art starts tomorrow.