Success!

We have been very hard at work the past several days. We had a wonderful time on our Soybean field trip yesterday as you can see from the picture!

We have finished chapter 1 in MATH. Students had their test on Tuesday and did an AWESOME job! I was so proud of them! I could tell from their scores that the students have been working very hard in class and at home to learn the concepts taught. I'm certain this will continue throughout the year.
We have just begun chapter 2. This chapter includes concepts on estimation and rounding. This seems to be difficult for fourth graders, so be sure you are asking your child about math each day. Anything you can do at home to help with estimating would be greatly beneficial to your child. If you go to the store, asking questions such as, "If we have $10.00, do we have enough money to buy milk, bread, and a package of candy?" Have them estimate the cost of each item to see if they think there is enough money. This is a real life concept that students will need to learn and continue to work on. If you need any other ideas of how to help at home, please don't hesitate to ask.

In READING last week we had our Centers. During Centers weeks in Reading, students are given a checklist of centers to finish for the week. They get as many of these done as possible and turn them in on Friday. Also during the week, I meet with leveled reading groups. I did not meet with leveled groups the first week of Centers, because I wanted to show the students how Centers were run in the classroom. Centers should always be independent since I will be working with other students in small groups while the rest of the class is working on their centers.
This week in Reading, we are reading a story about Jackie Mitchell. Jackie was the first female pitcher to play in the major leagues with men. She is famous for striking out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. We are continuing to work on character traits, motivations, and actions with this story as well as mapping out the story for comprehension. Students will have their comprehension test tomorrow (Friday).
I have also had a few students tell me that when their vocabulary words come home they are getting thrown away. I'm not sure if this is true, or if they just aren't showing parents their words they are supposed to be studying. If you have not seen Vocabulary come home this week, please let me know. Students will be tested over these words next Friday, September 21. These words will come home every other Monday on colored paper. If you ever see colored paper in your students backpack, please look at it. Colored paper means it's important (most of the time).

In LANGUAGE ARTS/SPELLING this week we are working on the other two types of sentences. These types of sentences are imperative (question) and exclamatory (exclamation). Along with exclamatory sentences, we also have discussed interjections. Interjections are words that are said with strong feeling such as WOW, GREAT, etc. These words are separated in an exclamatory sentence with a comma or exclamation mark. We will continue to discuss these types of sentences next week.
In SPELLING, students are working on words with variant vowels and dipthongs. To you and me, this means that words that have the 'o' sound can be spelled with an au or aw. Words with an 'oi' sound can be spelling with an oy or an oi, etc. Students have also told me that spelling lists are getting thrown away or not making it home on Monday nights. EVERY MONDAY NIGHT there should be a spelling list coming home with your child on colored paper. Please be looking for this in their backpacks. They need to study these words every night for 5-10 minutes to prepare for their test on Fridays. If they do not bring it home, don't forget you can access it on www.spellingcity.com


In SCIENCE, we are continuing to watch our soybean plants very closely. They have sprouted and have started to grow. We have covered half of them with a black trash bag to see if plants can grow without light. We will collect data for the first time today, so the students are excited to take the bag off very quickly to measure their plants to see if they are growing in the dark.
We also had our field trip to the KSU North Farm for our Soybean kick-off! The students had a great time seeing the soybean fields, sweeping for bugs on soybean plants, and seeing the bugs under a microscope. Students also got to see the equipment used in the fields to plant and harvest the soybeans. The picture shows our class in front of the harvesting machine used in the fields.

Don't forget that this Friday, September 14, is our Bergman Ice Cream Social from 6:00-8:00pm. You can purchase tickets at the door if you haven't had a chance to get them yet. There will be a live band at this event as well! Come and have a great time with the rest of the Bergman families.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns about happenings in the classroom, please let me know. I'm here to help your child in any way I can.

Have a great weekend!