Come Back to School on Thursday Night

Back to School Night

Yes, that's right, on Thursday evening, from 6:00-7:30pm, we will be holding our Back-to-School Night.  This is an important event where we will cover the following topics:

• Our goals at Free Orchards Elementary
• Our goals in the fourth grade
• Our homework policy (with a video, no less!)
• A chance to meet the teachers face-to-face and ask any questions you may have about the year

A Glance at Last Week

Last week we accomplished so much with our students. Take a look below to see what we have been working on.

Math

Last week we focused on multiplication models and improving our subtraction fluency. Based on a pretest, we saw that students needed some extra work with subtraction. Each morning students were given a quick, two and a half minute, timed test on basic subtraction facts. Most kids had score of 15 or less on the 50 question quiz on Monday; by Friday, nearly every score had doubled, or even tripled!

We will continue to work on multiplication arrays next week and will be learning about prime and composite numbers. If you need a quick review, here's a great song to help students remember their prime numbers (don't worry, we'll watch this in class at least 50 times this year!):

Reading

Our students received their first "Reading Menu" of the year. This is a fun, student-driven set of activities designed to help students focus on a variety of reading skills. They are given a selection of 5-10 reading exercises to complete over the course of two weeks. Some of the activities review basic skills, while others extend learning beyond the text we are reading in class. 

We have been reading The Kid in the Red Jacket aloud and Grandfather's Journey in smaller groups. Both stories tell about characters that have dealt with life-changing moves. We are focused on finding the main ideas, character's traits, and the themes of these pieces.

A-Z Reading Challenge

We also introduced the A-Z Reading Challenge on Friday. This is a fun way to help motivate our students to read throughout the year. We included the PowerPoint presentation below in case you or your student have any questions about this fun activity.

A to Z Reading Challenge

Homework

We also assigned our nightly math homework, provided a reading log, and gave our second DSL (writing homework) of the year. If you are not seeing these items every night, please be sure to ask your student to see their homework folder. If you have any questions, you may contact Mrs. Harrington or Ms. Kinsman by phone or email.

We are looking forward to seeing all of you next week!