Weekly Newsletter
Week of April 20-24
Week of April 20-24
The 4th nine weeks is halfway over, and students will get their progress reports on Tuesday. This is the perfect time for goal setting to finish the year STRONG, especially with reading! Reading GMAS will be Wednesday, April 29th & Thursday, April 30th for students. We are spending most of our class time reviewing previously learned skills and practicing peer review, which will be on the first day of testing. Thank you for your encouragment and help from home as we approach this important testing time.
We finished the Tall Tale, Thunder Rose last week. This week we will begin the folktale, In The Days of King Adobe. Focus skills are comparing & contrasting the perspectives of different narrators, explain how the protagonist and antagonist function in the plot of a story & determining the theme of a story. Vocabulary words are thrifty, generous, fascinated & character. Our vocabulary quiz will be Friday, and our open-notes tets will be on Monday of next week.
Vocabulary Slides are posted for review below.
Resources are posted on Google Classroom and under Reading Resources for your reference.
As we approach GMAS testing next week, we are reviewing previously learned skills to be sure students are refreshed and ready to succeed. We are also practicing some peer review tasks, which combine our ELA & Writing standards for the year, a skill that will be tested on Georgia Milestones next week.
We will continue to practice analogies and make connections and comparisons to groups of related words. This is an essential skill of mastering high level vocabulary in 4th grade.
In ELA, we are reviewing subject-verb agreement, verb tenses, conjunctions, comlex sentences, possessive nouns, punctuating dialogue, comparative & superlative adjectives & prepositional phrases. We will do mini review lessons and students will have an opportunity to practice these skills in class.
Unit 5: Shapes and Angles
We have been learning to understand angles as acute, right, and obtuse. We will examine how these angles show up in polygons. We will understand how angles create a circle that holds 360 degrees.
This week our focus will be on categorizing shapes based on their number of sides, angle types, and whether they have perpendicular and parallel lines. We will continue our discussion to include triangles, which will increase our vocabulary to include equilateral, isoceles, and scalene. Additionally we will begin to look at symmetry in shapes and in nature.
We will plug in review for GMAS using our spiral review.
Unit 5: Ecosystems and the Food Chain
We have learned the basic tiers of the food chain: producers, primary consumers, secondary consumers, tertiary consumers, and apex preditors. We will continue to learn about the ecosystems or biomes which help make the food chain strong. We will discuss features of biomes such as location on Earth, land features, climate, native plants and animals living in those biomes.
We are finishing our unit on The Civil War. Students received their study guide last week, and will have three more nights to prepare for Thursday's test.
Last week we discussed Reconstruction, and how the United States and its people are in great need of assistance to heal their homes and their hearts. We discussed the 13th, 14th & 15th Amendments, The Freedmen's Bureau, and sharecropping. We will continue to review throughout the week before Thursday's test. Please help your child study each night this week to ensure they are confident and ready.
There are many helpful slides with embedded video clips posted on our Social Studies page.
4/27-PBIS Store
4/29-GMAS Testing ELA Section 1 (Peer Review)
4/30-GMAS Testing ELA Sections 2-3 (Reading & ELA)
5/1- Hat Day for Blood Cancer Research $2
5/5-GMAS Testing Math Sections 1-2 (Scratch Paper Galore)
Wish List Items-We are in great need of paper towels.