Week of Sept. 28th - Oct. 1st

Fiesta Catracha:
Due to the fact that we have been absent from school so many days, all of the activities for Fiesta Catracha have been cancelled.

Book Report:
Our book report is due Oct. 5th, 2009. The format will be given in school and it will be completed in class.

Literacy:
Since we didn’t come to school Tuesday and Wednesday of the last week, all activities planned for those days related to Just a Dream have will be done until this week. Thursday and Friday of last week the students read City Green in class.

Read Aloud:
This week we will begin reading the story “Just a Dream”, by Chris Van Allsburg, we will focus on making inferences and predictions, and irregular verbs.

Read Aloud for fun! "Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing", by Judy Blume.

Shared Reading:
Similes: We will be reading similes from the story City Green; we will focus on identifying and understanding the meaning of similes.
We will be reading the poem “Who Cares about Trees? “. We will focus on discussing poetry as a text structure:
1) Compare and contrast poetry to other text structures2) We will identify common features that we notice about poetry: stanzas, white spaces, creative punctuation, phrases units versus complete sentences, rhyme, etc.We will also make connections between the poem and the story “Just a Dream”.

Interactive Writing:
City Green: We will finish a Problem and Solution chart.
Just a Dream: We will be completing a Cause (different ways humans are harming the environment) and Effect (the consequences of our actions) chart based on what we read on Just a Dream.

Independent Writing:
City Green: Students will read and explain the meaning of similes.

Just a Dream: Students will be explaining some of Walter’s dream, explaining their cause and effect, and coming up with possible solutions.

Students will also participate in Guided Reading Groups and Centers.

New Word Wall Words:
edge, receive, believe, necessary



Math:
This week we have started the second of three sections of the place value and time unit. Section A was looking at place value. Section B is exploring comparing & ordering numbers as well as rounding numbers.
Thursday we will have our regular time test (this week based on 3s times table) followed by a Section B Quiz.
In our 4A community meeting this morning we identified the "problem of the week" was that students needed to better prepare for the Time Tests. Solutions to solve this problem included practicing for at least 10 minutes EVERY day.

Science:
We are currently doing interactive editing on the theme of "Water Mixes". Wednesday we will start the last of our formal lessons in the water unit - "Sink or Float" which should take us to the end of this week. Next week we will do some follow-up activities and then review for a test that I have yet to schedule but will most likely be at the end of next week. This test will include EVERYTHING that we have learned about water thus far. Students can start to review now using the handouts in their notebooks.