NEWSLETTER September 24, 2016
Summary of the Week: It was so great to see most of the parents at SEPs last week. For the few of you who had some conflicts and couldn’t get in to see me, let’s try again for this coming week. We are moving along with our unit 2 in math. We talked about multiplication models, estimation, and did some multistep problem solving tasks. Our spelling this week was the long i sound. I had a few technical issues so this list was not loaded up on Spelling City this week but we worked on it in class. Next week’s list will be back on Spelling City so you can also work on it at home. The kids did really well with learning how to navigate their websites such as finding usernames and passwords. We did research using the UEN’s online encyclopedia on Utah ecosystems and they had fun creating their “habitat plates”. (I’ll send them home later so you can see them). Our reading genre this week was narrative nonfiction and we read about gravity, inertia, acceleration etc. We also talked about how knowing the text structure can help us with understanding the story. I love how well the Wonders language arts program integrates the curriculum! The text structure we learned about this week included headings, speech bubbles and pictures.
Q/A: “When will my student’s grades be posted in Power-school?” I’m sorry for the delay on this one. I’ve corrected stacks of papers but I’m currently deciding what is important enough to count on their overall grade. Please check back in Power-school within the next week or so and you’ll be able to see your student’s progress towards grades. It’s a typical first year teacher struggle but as the year progresses, this will become more fluent for me. Thanks for your patience!
What is Road to Success? For those new to the program, Road to Success is a program where your student can work towards prizes by tracking the amount of time spent reading. I don’t enter this information into the Road to Success website for you, but you can use your student’s reading log that we do in our class to help you keep track of those minutes.
How do I access Road to Success? Wonders? Go Math? etc. You can access most any of the texts or programs we use in our class. When you go to my website; mrshamula4thgrade.weebly.com you will see a page called “Quick Links” Here you will find all of the places we use frequently visit in our class. To get your student’s login and password go to their website ( “Student Websites” on my classroom website) They should know the password to get into this page. If they don’t, please email or text me and I’ll send it to you.
How do I access the interactive newsletter and why would I want to? To get to this site, you can go to the Newsletter tab on my website but you have to be invited in order to access it. I’ve already sent out invites via email but I’ll resend them. (If you didn’t get it, please let me know). I post the regular newsletter on here, but there is also a feature where you can add questions or comments either to a specific newsletter or to a general discussion. Also, this site is more protected so I can post pictures of our kids and our events. There are some fun pictures on there of our cotton candy party.
When is our next field trip? Can I help? We are going to the Murray Nature Center on October 19 at 9 am. If you want to join us, just let me know!
Next Week: We’ll be working through the distributive property, models of multiplication with multi-digit numbers, and apply what we’ve learned in unit two to some problem solving tasks. In language arts, our essential question is “How can starting a business help others?” and our spelling pattern is the long o sound. The comprehension strategy this week is “re-reading”. This strategy will go well with our read aloud novel, “The Mulberry Project” because we will finish this book this week and start re-reading parts of it to determine the different themes in this story. This week we'll be working on our reading goal which is collective this first term. This means that we are reading a book together as a class, and we’ll be doing reflections and presentations on this book. Because it is a whole group effort, we should all be successful with our reading goal for term 1. In subsequent terms, the reading goals will be more individualistic and based on individual reading reflections and time spent reading at home.
Silkworms: Our silkworms are only a couple weeks away from building cocoons and becoming moths. If your student would like to take home a silkworm or two to watch this happen at home; that is just fine by me. If not, no worries, we have plenty in class. To take home a silkworm(s), please send your student with a note saying it’s okay with you and also be able to feed your little critter at home. They only eat Mulberry leaves. You can pick up silkworm chow online; http://www.nilesbio.com/prod325.html We will be talking about a lot of cycles in 4th grade, water cycle, rock cycle etc. The silkworms are teaching us about cycles and helping us build our scientific observation and data taking skills. (Plus they are cute, fun and interesting!)
Teacher Request: Please save old toilet paper rolls and send them to class so we can give the silkworms some homes to make their cocoons.
Thanks for being so supportive at home! Let me know if you need anything from me.
Shelly Hamula
Summary of the Week: It was so great to see most of the parents at SEPs last week. For the few of you who had some conflicts and couldn’t get in to see me, let’s try again for this coming week. We are moving along with our unit 2 in math. We talked about multiplication models, estimation, and did some multistep problem solving tasks. Our spelling this week was the long i sound. I had a few technical issues so this list was not loaded up on Spelling City this week but we worked on it in class. Next week’s list will be back on Spelling City so you can also work on it at home. The kids did really well with learning how to navigate their websites such as finding usernames and passwords. We did research using the UEN’s online encyclopedia on Utah ecosystems and they had fun creating their “habitat plates”. (I’ll send them home later so you can see them). Our reading genre this week was narrative nonfiction and we read about gravity, inertia, acceleration etc. We also talked about how knowing the text structure can help us with understanding the story. I love how well the Wonders language arts program integrates the curriculum! The text structure we learned about this week included headings, speech bubbles and pictures.
Q/A: “When will my student’s grades be posted in Power-school?” I’m sorry for the delay on this one. I’ve corrected stacks of papers but I’m currently deciding what is important enough to count on their overall grade. Please check back in Power-school within the next week or so and you’ll be able to see your student’s progress towards grades. It’s a typical first year teacher struggle but as the year progresses, this will become more fluent for me. Thanks for your patience!
What is Road to Success? For those new to the program, Road to Success is a program where your student can work towards prizes by tracking the amount of time spent reading. I don’t enter this information into the Road to Success website for you, but you can use your student’s reading log that we do in our class to help you keep track of those minutes.
How do I access Road to Success? Wonders? Go Math? etc. You can access most any of the texts or programs we use in our class. When you go to my website; mrshamula4thgrade.weebly.com you will see a page called “Quick Links” Here you will find all of the places we use frequently visit in our class. To get your student’s login and password go to their website ( “Student Websites” on my classroom website) They should know the password to get into this page. If they don’t, please email or text me and I’ll send it to you.
How do I access the interactive newsletter and why would I want to? To get to this site, you can go to the Newsletter tab on my website but you have to be invited in order to access it. I’ve already sent out invites via email but I’ll resend them. (If you didn’t get it, please let me know). I post the regular newsletter on here, but there is also a feature where you can add questions or comments either to a specific newsletter or to a general discussion. Also, this site is more protected so I can post pictures of our kids and our events. There are some fun pictures on there of our cotton candy party.
When is our next field trip? Can I help? We are going to the Murray Nature Center on October 19 at 9 am. If you want to join us, just let me know!
Next Week: We’ll be working through the distributive property, models of multiplication with multi-digit numbers, and apply what we’ve learned in unit two to some problem solving tasks. In language arts, our essential question is “How can starting a business help others?” and our spelling pattern is the long o sound. The comprehension strategy this week is “re-reading”. This strategy will go well with our read aloud novel, “The Mulberry Project” because we will finish this book this week and start re-reading parts of it to determine the different themes in this story. This week we'll be working on our reading goal which is collective this first term. This means that we are reading a book together as a class, and we’ll be doing reflections and presentations on this book. Because it is a whole group effort, we should all be successful with our reading goal for term 1. In subsequent terms, the reading goals will be more individualistic and based on individual reading reflections and time spent reading at home.
Silkworms: Our silkworms are only a couple weeks away from building cocoons and becoming moths. If your student would like to take home a silkworm or two to watch this happen at home; that is just fine by me. If not, no worries, we have plenty in class. To take home a silkworm(s), please send your student with a note saying it’s okay with you and also be able to feed your little critter at home. They only eat Mulberry leaves. You can pick up silkworm chow online; http://www.nilesbio.com/prod325.html We will be talking about a lot of cycles in 4th grade, water cycle, rock cycle etc. The silkworms are teaching us about cycles and helping us build our scientific observation and data taking skills. (Plus they are cute, fun and interesting!)
Teacher Request: Please save old toilet paper rolls and send them to class so we can give the silkworms some homes to make their cocoons.
Thanks for being so supportive at home! Let me know if you need anything from me.
Shelly Hamula
Newsletter September 10, 2016
Summary of our week: This week our class earned their first “Super Gem” award which we celebrated with a cotton candy party. A huge “thank you!” to Anita Hallman and Allison Young for getting this together. The class earns gems for meeting our behavior goals. We’ve been working on raising hands rather than talking out during class, attending during whole class instructions and using a “12 inch” voice during independent working times. They are making progress even though we still have some work to do. In math we tackled subtraction with big numbers and we reviewed regrouping. I want them to understand conceptually what they are doing when regrouping rather than just asking them to memorize the algorithm. This can be frustrating because I’m asking them to slow down and look at the bigger picture rather than rushing to follow the recipe. In language arts we read several stories which helped us answer the question, “How do our actions affect others?” We had some great discussions on bullying. I was really impressed by their mature thoughts and attitudes. For example, they talked about how sometimes a bully doesn’t feel good inside or has poor self-esteem (one of our vocabulary words) and that is why a bully tries to feel better by making others feel as bad as he or she feels. (This idea came from them; I didn’t feed it to them). They are showing their growing ability to use complex thought and see multiple perspectives. We used context clues to understand vocabulary words and we put story events in chronological order to help with comprehension. In spelling, we studied words which have the long vowel a sound and all the different ways this sound is spelled. We started reading our social studies text about latitude, longitude and geography. We completed Dibels testing (a reading test). We also started our “Learning Café”. In Learning Café they will be given choices to do during independent working time. These choices involve activities in the core subject areas…literacy, math, social studies, science, etc. This week I’ve been getting them used to working independently. Next week I will be busy with holding small reading groups while they work on their own or in pairs. In writer’s workshop this week, we did free writing on topics of their choice. I want to build their confidence, interest and fluency in writing. I was pleased by how many motivated writers I have in my class. Overall, it was a great week!
Next week: In math, we just finished lesson 1.7 and will complete unit 1 with addition and subtraction in word problems in lesson 1.8. We’ll then take our chapter 1 test and start chapter 2 on multiplication of one digit numbers. Our essential question next week in language arts is “How do people respond to natural disasters?” Our spelling target next week is the long vowel e spelling pattern. We will be using text structure to help with comprehension of expository text. We will continue to use context clues for understanding vocabulary words. In science we will investigate the concept of ‘habitats” which will dovetail nicely with our study of geography in social studies. We didn’t have time last week to discuss our independent research on our silkworm questions but we will start this upcoming week. I’d like them to present their question and the answer they found in their research to the rest of the class. I’m making this informal so they don’t have to get too nervous about it. (no need for posters or fancy presentations). I just want to get them used to presenting in front of the class. We’ll do this as we sit in our community circle so they will feel less anxious about it. I will also give them time in class to continue their research. Please encourage them to continue questioning and pick one of their questions that interest them the most. I’d like this research to come from an intrinsic desire to know rather than just fulfilling a class assignment.
Also, I choose not to post pictures of my students on my classroom website due to privacy concerns. But I will post pictures of our cotton candy party on the interactive newsletter site which requires permission to view: http://mrshamula4thgrade.weebly.com/interactive-newsletter.html If you aren’t yet a member of this site, you can use this request code to join; NJJ3TPD. You can also email me directly and I can resend the invitation.
As always please call, text or email if you have any questions, problems or concerns.
Shelly Hamula [email protected] 801-201-5295
Newsletter September 5, 2016
Summary of our week: As you probably have learned by now, our silkworms hatched! It was an exciting day. We did observations (did you know that the egg is actually clear and it is the worm’s body that makes the egg dark?) We wrote data. We pondered and asked questions. We researched answers to some of those questions. This was my favorite…“How do they communicate?” After researching it... “They communicate with chemicals. But what does that mean?” Questions leading to answers which lead to more questions. I love it! Sadly many of these little critters won’t make it to adulthood but some of them will and we’ll be watching, recording, questioning, and learning about life cycles. Other than our silkworms, we learned about rounding, estimating, and did three digit addition. We’re using predictions to help with reading comprehension. We finished short vowel spelling words and started long vowels. The students are learning about working hard and saving money in our scholar store. Each week they can spend their scholar dollars for items in our store. Right now they are getting scholar money for getting their planners and reading logs signed, doing their team and whole group jobs and for “wowing” me. (for example.. using one of our vocabulary words in our discussions). They had a great time with Ms. Bawden’s first grade class reading buddies. They are the big kids here and the little ones look up to them. I saw a lot of great bonding and reading happening. We’ll do this again at the end of each month.
Homework: We are working through Unit 1 in Go Math and you are starting to see more homework come home. I have also loaded up spelling lists on Spelling City. Look for a list of addresses, usernames and passwords coming home soon. I apologize for not getting this out last week. I also asked them to pick one of the questions we came up with for our silkworms and research it more at home. We will talk about these next Friday Sept 9 so they have until then to bring this in.
Next week plans: After this week, our language arts units will all begin on Monday and we will have spelling tests on Fridays. This week we will finish long vowels and have our test on Thursday. Look for assignments on Spelling City to practice at home. The login information will be in your child’s homework folders this week. The goal is to finish up Unit 1 in Math unless we need more review. I’ve noticed they need a little more instruction with regrouping so we’ll see how they do.
As always please call, text or email if you have any questions, problems or concerns.
Shelly Hamula [email protected] 801-201-5295