Mrs. Herr's Fourth Grade Newsletter

                                          November 17, 2008

 Fourth Grade Theater Project                                              Our fourth graders are part of an island-wide fourth grade theater project.  Kate and J.J. from the Vineyard Playhouse have been coming into our classroom to work with the students and will continue to do so this week.  In December and January, our class will travel by school bus to the Playhouse in Vineyard Haven to work in the theater for 1 hour and 45 minutes each session.  A calendar of dates is being sent home in the Monday Folder.  Please keep it for reference.  It is really important that your child be able to be part of the two shows on Saturday, January 24, 2009. 

Math : Writing multiplication and division equations for comparison problems proved to be a bit tricky to understand.  We will continue to work on this concept from time to time, but we will be moving on to solving multi-step word problems. 

Reading: We learned how guide words can help us locate words in the dictionary and practiced using them to look up words in a dictionary.  Other skills practiced were the use of commas in our writing and common nouns.  Students read two stories: Chester Cricket's Pigeon Ride and The Parcel Post Kid, and everyone took the weekly skills test.

Science: We read about special adaptations like camouflage, countershading, warning coloration, and mimicry.  The students learned that placement and mobility of ears affect sound transmission and help animals survive in their environment.  

Writing: We worked on sentence fluency.  Students learned to combine short choppy sentences to better develop their ideas and involve the reader in the action of the story.

                                       Have a good week,

                                        Pat and Jolene