Friday, November 29, 2013

For 5th Grade Stock Market Activity

Sorry this is late 5th grade!

For your patience all 6 stocks have double profits on November 29th!

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving to our 4th grade students and families!

Thank you to everyone who donated items and money to the Philippines, the tornado victims, and to our food drive for Thanksgiving.  The students were very generous! 

Also we completed out first Reader's Response on Sea Turtles.  The students did a nice job on it.  The responded to an article and a video and wrote some great things. 

After Thanksgiving we will get back to a semi-"normal" week.  Some upcoming items would be:

Tuesday- Gym quiz on Floor Hockey: Study guides went home last week for Mrs. Carbone's class and Today for Miss Winter's Class

Wednesday: Reconciliation in the morning

Thursday: Band Concert in the afternoon for students and in the evening for families

Friday: Music show in the church basement for our senior citizens

After break we will do our normal This week in... to update about subject news and assignments. 

Have a Great Break!

Monday, November 18, 2013

Week of November 18th

Good Morning 4th grade families!

First of all we will be sending extra prayers to the families who were affected by the tornadoes on Sunday during class.  Also on Tuesday during mass, Father John has asked that we have collection baskets for each of the grade levels to help the Philippines.  Hopefully your student earned/can earn some extra allowance money to donate.  We will have one student as our fourth grade representative to bring the basket up to the altar during mass.  Also Mrs. Carbone's class will be leading mass this week. 

This week in...

Reading:  We will be writing our extended responses on sea turtles.  The students did a great job closely reading their articles from National Geographic and learned a lot of information.  Writing about sea turtles should be a piece of cake!  They will be due on Wednesday and we will also start reading Emerald's Eggs as well.  The test on Emerald's Eggs will be on Tuesday the 26th.

Religion:  We will begin Chapter 4

Spelling:  Lesson 15

4th LA: Sequencing the events and history of Thanksgiving and this will turn into an essay.

5th LA: Finishing up ugly endangered animal reports and will be completing an extended response on the Gettysburg Address

4th SS:  We will be starting our tour of the Southeast.  We will be visiting 10 places.  Feel free to take a look at our maps in our binders as we travel along!

5th SS:  Chapter 5- probably not going to finish this chapter before Thanksgiving break.  We have also started our stock market activity where the students have bought "stocks" in different companies that the English Colonists have set up.  They should be checking their running totals each night to make sure their math is correct.  Excited to see who wins the Golden Corn in each class!!

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Loggerhead Sea Turtles

Just in case you want to view the video one more time!  There is some more information on here as well!

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/animals/creaturefeature/loggerhead/

E-Books and Audio Books

At conferences the idea of E-Books and Audio Books were brought up.    We know that many of our 4th grade families have an iPad of some sort at home.  There are some pros and cons to using them both.  Some pros (in our opinion) include:

-Instant dictionary- click the word and you are taken to the meaning of the word
-Only viewing one page at a time- not overwhelming
-Change text size
-Can't flip through aimlessly to waste time and 'see' how many more pages are left

Some cons (in our opinion) include:
-Not holding the book
-Not always having the technology to use
-Price of buying e-books

Some E-Books also come with the option of being an audio book.  With an audio book you can simply plug in your ear-buds and listen to someone read the story as you follow along.  Personally the only con would be it's easy to get off track if you are not paying attention-but you can rewind!

There have been some studies done linking audio books with increasing fluency in readers.  Fluency is the rate and expression in which one reads.  A fluent reader's eyes are normally ahead of the words that they are actually saying making the voice smooth, not choppy.  Also since they are reading ahead with their eyes they know if the sentence is a question or an exclamatory one which adds to the expression factor.  There is also some research into fluency and comprehension.  However we find that at the 4th grade level some students can read quickly and have great fluency but they have no idea what they are reading.

With all this said we think that SOMETIMES reading an e-book or listening to an audio book is great, not every book needs to be read this way.  It is just a nice way to switch it up.  A student could have a hard copy at school of a book and listen to or read an e-book of the same title at home. 

Looking at e-books and audio book they can be very expensive to buy.  However there is an iPad and iPhone app where you can login and borrow books from any SWAN library- Downers Grove and Woodridge included, complete list here.  Once the free app is downloaded, some users will need to login with an adobe password (it's free, when I did it I didn't even realize that I had one!), and then login with your library card.  If you have ever requested materials from the library online then you will have your pin (passcode that you have created) if not then you will need to register your library card online through your library home webpage.

You may borrow an e-book for 2 weeks.  Sometimes you may need to put a hold on a book if there is not enough digital copies for the more popular titles.  The best part is the search feature and the advance search feature- you can advance search by grade level which may be helpful if your student does not know the exact title they want.

**Please remember that adult books are available to checkout as well so this may be an app that only adults use to checkout books and students then can read the books or something that you browse with your student together. 

The app is OverDrive Media Console click here for a link.  It is definitely worth checking out if you haven't done so yet!

Happy Reading (and maybe for you too!)!!



Wednesday, November 13, 2013

Week of November 13th

Good Morning!

This week in...

Reading:  We will spend the next couple of weeks, up to Thanksgiving break, on the story Emerald's Eggs.  It is about sea turtles and the challenges they face.  We will first complete an extended response using nonfiction text pieces and then read the story.  The story test will be on Tuesday the 26th

Religion:  Chapter 4

Spelling: Lesson 14

4th LA: Singular and Plural Possessive

5th LA: Singular and Plural Possessive

4th SS:  We will finish up lesson 3 today, Thursday is a review day, and Friday they will take their Chapter 6 Test.  This also means that chapter 6 vocabulary will be due. 

5th SS:  Chapter 5.  It is a longer chapter, not sure if we will finish it before Thanksgiving. 

Friday, November 8, 2013

Pickle Ball Quiz

Good Evening!

Ms. Simpson wanted us to remind all of our 4th graders that their pickle ball quiz will be on Tuesday during gym.  They have two study guides- a packet and a single front and back sheet of paper.  They should study both- read them, highlight important parts, etc.

They should bring the front and back single sheet of paper back with them on Tuesday.  A little bird (named Ms. Simpson) told us that they can use them on the quiz!!!

Have a great rest of your super long weekend!

Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Book Fair

One more note- we are very busy this week!  We will be attending the book fair tomorrow (Wednesday) at 1:00 to buy books.  If your student is going to be shopping please send them with money.  Also the book fair will be open during parent teacher conferences and it is in the church basement.  Thank you!

Monday, November 4, 2013

Week of November 4th

Happy November 4th Grade Families!

Remember this week there is no school on Friday due to Parent-Teacher Conferences.  We are looking forward to seeing you all again.

 On Wednesday we have our field trip to see Johnny Appleseed at the Tivoli.  On Thursday the 4th grade has earned an out of uniform day and a popcorn party due to our win in the box top contest! 

This week in....

Reading:  We finished up Cyber Pigs today.  We will be looking at different versions of the Three Little Pigs and making sure that everything is organized in reading.  Next week we will start Emerald's Eggs but this week there is simply no time due to no reading on Wednesday (field trip) and no school on Friday.  Our book report packet will go home in our Friday (Thursday) folders. 

Religion:  We will finish our movie on The Ten Commandments and discuss the story we saw.  The students were amazed today at everything that happened before Moses freed his people- the frogs, hail, dust storms, etc.  We also had two eighth graders come in today and talk to us about our school wide project- Devotion to the Saints.  Each week a class will be responsible for creating and bringing in items for the saint of the week for all to see and learn from.  It should be a great project!

Spelling:  We are SKIPPING lesson 12 and this week we will complete LESSON 13.  The workbook and test will be due/done on Thursday

4th SS:  We will finish up Chapter 6 this week.  We will have a social studies test next week- possibly Wednesday?

5th SS:  Chapter 4 test Tuesday and Wednesday.  On Thursday we will preview chapter 5 and learn about our in class stock market activity.

4th LA: Nouns

5th LA: Nouns