April 29th
MUR
Last week the class took their MCA reading test. We are going to celebrate working hard on our MCA by having a root beer floats at the end of this week when everyone in our class will be here. We our finishing up A Wrinkle in Time this week and will take a small quiz on it. We will start a new novel this week too Among the Hidden. We our changing up our spelling and vocabulary homework from now until the end of the year. This week the students only have 10 homophones and they have several options to pick from for homework but only still need to do three. There will not be any vocabulary homework or tests. We will be working on prefixes, suffixes and base/root word but this will be in class. We will also be doing more grammar reviewing pronouns and then going into 4 types of sentences, adjectives and adverbs.
MUM
Thursday, we had a fun day of learning and eating m & m's. I promised the students if they worked hard on their math MCA we would have fun with creating charts and eat candy. The students will start to work on measurement both standard and metric on length, capacity and weight and also Roman Numerals. We will continue to review all the math concepts that the students have learned so far until we take our final interim.
April 2
MUR
The next few weeks we will be reviewing everything that we have worked on so far concentrating on determining what is the main idea of a passage and the details, the theme of a passage and using context clues to understand the meaning of an unfamiliar word. We will also be working on testing strategies to prepare for the MCA testing.
MUR
In math we will review areas that students struggled with on the third interim to help prepare for MCA. We will start working on coordinate grid and ordered pair, also interpreting charts and graphs.
Feb.19th
MUR
The next couple weeks we will be focusing on two stories in the Common Core Coach book on Scientific Nonfiction. The first story is Nature's Worst Storms we will be focusing on science vocabulary, sequence of events and summarizing. The second story is Adapting to Survive we will be focusing on vocabulary, inferences, problem and solution, main idea and details, diagrams and charts. We have really gotten into A Wrinkle in Time and the students are excited to see if Meg finds her father. They also may have seen that Disney is coming out March 9 with this as a movie. In Grammar we will be working on articles (a, an, and the) and pronouns.
**Remember that this is a new trimester and only a few assignments have been put into Infinite Campus.
MUM
In Geometry we have worked on angles, triangles, and quadrilaterals and polygons. This week we will focus on area of square and rectangle. The formula is length x width = area squared Then we will work on area of composite figure. 5 steps to calculate
1. divide shape into squares or rectangles.
2. figure out measurement on missing side.
3. calculate the area of shape 1 using L X W
4. calculate the area of shape 2 using L X W
5. add the two areas to find the total area
We will continue to review and cycle back over topics that have been covered.
Jan. 28th
MUR
We have started reading a variety of passages on different text structure and this will continue for several weeks. In Grammar we will be working on possessive nouns and then pronouns. Our Novel that we will be reading is A Wrinkle in Time this is a fantasy science fiction novel from the 60's. The students are lucky that Disney has made a movie on the book and will be coming out this spring.
MUM
We started on lines, rays, etc... and now starting angles and how to measure angles using a protractor and then we will be going into triangles.
Jan. 15th
MUR
The fourth grade students have been learning about poetry, prose and drama and there different elements. We have spent a lot of time on 4 different types of poetry Haiku, Limerick, Free style and Narrative and the differences between them. We will be testing on these and historical nonfiction on our interim. Anything that the students struggle with I will continue to review in class. Starting next week we will be working on Technical Texts and focusing on 4 main skills chronological order, problem and solution, cause and effect and compare and contrast.
MUM
In math the students have been working hard on Algebra and in and out tables. After the interim completed, on Tuesday we will start reviewing in and out tables and take a quiz on them on either Wednesday or Thursday. Then we will start Geometry. There are many terms in Geometry and I will be passing out a green cheat sheets with all the terms and diagrams to help. We will start lines, segments, point, rays then go into angles and triangles.
Dec. 1st
MUR
This week the prefixes the students will have in spelling are en: within or in ,mis: bad or wrong and pre: before. They will still be responsible for knowing the meaning of the three prefixes and giving two examples of each prefix on a base word.
In Grammar the students had started to work on nouns. Over the next few weeks the learn about pronouns, plural nouns and possessive nouns.
In literature they are still reading historical nonfiction. The stories this week are on John Muir the conservationist, and Ellis and Hope Island. The students will be comparing and contrasting the two stories. At the end of the week the will students learn about the elements of drama and read a few plays The Hare and the Hedgehog and The Pot of Gold. We will also start a new novel. A Lion to Guard Us.
MUR
This week we will finish up on decimals and the students will have a test on Thursday. The class will do a review in Wednesday in class. Friday we will review the test and start Algebra.
Nov. 5th
MUR
Mrs. Miller and I have added prefixes to our spelling list this week. The prefixes that the students will be responsible for knowing are in-,im, and non. They all have the same meaning not. We will study these in class the students will be asked to write the three prefixes and their meaning on their test and give us two examples of each prefix on a base word such as impossible.
We will continue working on verbs in grammar this week and have a test on verbs on Friday.
For literature we are continuing with The Genius Files and starting reading nonfiction stories. In our Common Core book the students will read This Time Was Different about the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl.
The week of Nov. 13 the students will take a reading ACT test on Tuesday the 14th and Thursday the 16th.
MUR
The students will be reviewing the first part of this week fractions and then midweek taking a test on them. At the end of the week the students will starting learning about decimals to the tenth, hundredth and how they relate to fractions. Monday Nov. 13 the 4th grade students will be taking a math ACT test. I have seen an improvement in the students knowing their multiplication facts. Soon I will be starting doing drills on division facts.
Oct. 5
The students have been working hard to learn division. This has been a big challenge for all the students but I love they way the students didn't give up and kept working at it. We will continue to review long division and multi-step multiplication. Today the students took a quiz on division, multiplication, multiples, and factors and knowing if a number is a prime or composite. We are going to start working on fractions. They will start with adding and subtracting with common denominators, creating equivalent fractions, simplifying fractions, and comparing them. The students will get a cheat sheet or two that will support them in learning fractions.
MUR
The students have started reading short stories from the Common Core Coach text. In reading Secrets of the Sea the students have learned about the author's point of view, context clues, inference, characters and setting in a story and how they play a key role and comparing characters. Next week they students will read A Monumental Mystery we will continue to work on the same reading strategies plus writing a summary. They will have a spelling test on lesson 3 words. The week of M.E.A. we will not have any spelling or vocabulary that week, but I will send home the homework for the following week so if they want to work on it they may.
Sept. 22
MUR
We our working on a comparative paragraph on the two stories of Pele's Fire and Like Fire and Water . The students will continue to identifying theme and plots of the stories in Common Core Coach that we read in class and writing summaries of these stories. We will continue to read additional folktales, fables and legends. This week is Spelling week with Lesson 2 words. In class we will continue to work on verbs in our grammar books. Students should be able to identify the main verb and its tense in a sentence and if there are are helping verbs.
MUM
Students have worked on multiples and least common multiples and factors and greatest common factors. We will review place value, round/estimation and double digit multiplication today and Monday I plan to give a test on these concepts. Multiples and factors will not be on this test. Tuesday, we will start division and long division. The students will get a cheat sheet to help them remember all the steps for it. So please continue to have your child to practice their multiplication facts just 5 minutes a night.
Sept. 8th
Hello, My name is Laurie Nilsson and I will be teaching your child 4th grade MUM (Mixed Up Math) and or MUR (Mixed Up Reading). Last week the students took their first interim in both math and reading.
Three to four times a week we will do 4-5 minute math drills on their basic multiplication and division facts. The purpose is to improve speed and mastery of their facts. I have shown the students how to practice their multiplication facts using a regular deck of cards and how to play WAR and practice their facts. Ask them to demonstrate for you and have them practice. Please have your child practice their multiplication and division facts nightly for only 5 minutes. The first unit in math will be on Place Value. The students will need to know the place value of numbers up to 1,000,000 and be able to write any number in standard, word or expanded form. We will compare numbers and also they will learn to round and estimate numbers.
MUR parents I will be handing out each Friday morning their vocabulary or spelling list for the following week. Your child will get to pick 3 out of 4 assignments that will be due every Friday. I plan to assign the vocabulary words the first week where the student needs to know the meaning(s). The second week will be the same spelling words with 3 out of 4 assignments that will also be due every Friday.
We will start our Grammar area of study with verbs
For the Literature part of Reading we will begin with folk tales and be reading old classic folk tales such as Lion and Mouse to myths. One of the main strategies the students will be working on determining the theme of the stories we read.
