The Week Ahead 3/4 - 3/8

Reading
The snow days last week messed with our schedule a bit. We will have a gallery walk to share all of our book reports on Wednesday, 3/6. However, Friday, 3/1 was the last day students will be given to work on their project at school. If they are not done yet, they will need to complete their project at home. Check in with your student and ask if they have finished their project yet. 

Idiom of the week: broadside of the barn

Math 
Next week we will continue the second half of our fractions unit. We'll start with extending fraction equivalence to fractions that are greater than 1. To have success with this skill students need to be able to convert between improper and mixed fractions fluently. For example they may be given two fractions like 33/9 and 3 1/3 and be asked to compare them. This problem is much easier if they can turn 33/9 into 3 6/9. At that point, they are able to tell that it is larger than 3 1/3. 

How We Organize Ourselves 
We will wrap up our inquiry with the central idea that community values influence leaders and impact decision making. Students will be working in their committees to write their bill and make convincing arguments to urge their fellow legislators that it should become a classroom law. We will be voting on the bills on Friday, 3/8. In order for a bill to become a law it needs to get a majority yes vote in both the Senate and House. In addition, Governor Blanc needs to sign it.

Erin's Law

The week of March 4th we will be covering Erin’s Law. Previously I sent an email with the lesson outcomes and websites with more information. If you would like your child to opt out of these lessons, please contact the main office to fill out a form. Your child will receive a different lesson with Ms. Sonnichsen (who is filling in for Mrs. Daniel-Hoffman). All of fourth grade will be covering the same material during that time. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or concerns.


SparkFun Visit
Representatives from SparkFun, the company that make Micro:bits, will be visiting the 4th grade classes at West TV on Monday, 3/11. They heard about the ways we were using the Micro:bits to incorporate computer coding and wanted to see us in action. They would like to take pictures and film students using Micro:bits, so a release form was sent home last week on their behalf.

Continent Club
We were on our field trip last week during the school continent club check day. Fortunately, we will still get to participate because there are parent volunteers who are willing to pull students on Monday 3/4. Africa is the continent in focus. The study materials can be found here.


Upcoming Dates 
  • Monday, March 4th - Continent Club - Africa
  • Tuesday, March 5th - Reading Log Due/Vocab Test
  • Friday, March 8th - Voting on Class Bills
  • Saturday, March 9th - PTC Auction
  • Monday, March 11th - SparkFun Visiting Our Class
  • Monday, March 25th - Friday, March 29th - No School - Spring Break

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