It is so great to come back from Spring Break and see everyone’s rested and smiling faces! They were really excited when they figured out there was only 39 days of school left. (34 now!) I can’t believe that they will be heading across the street to the Intermediate School.

We have a whole lot of learning to do before we head off to 5th Grade!

Math – We have learned how to create equivalent fraction changes and how to simplify fractions! Remember the jealous siblings, whatever you do for one you must do for the other. Ask your child what this means.  I have stressed the importance of knowing multiplication and division facts, those that are struggling with simplifying do not have a strong grasp of their multiplication and division facts. We will continue to work with simplifying fractions and converting improper fractions to mixed numbers. We will also begin converting fractions to decimals next week.

Reading – We are continuing to work on reading non-fiction texts. We have learned how to teach others about what we have read.  We are also working on identifying main ideas and supporting details from the texts we are reading. Students are learning how to take notes about their reading by using boxes (main idea) and bullets (supporting details).

Writing – We are currently reading a piece that we will be writing about. We are using many of the close reading strategies that we have learned to help us really study the text and the characters. We have also looked at finding a big idea in the story that is important to us.  We will be using these to develop thesis next week.

Social Studies – We are continuing to learn about how the U.S. Government was formed, the type of government we have, the three branches of government and their duties and the separation of powers? Big ideas and concepts!

As you have probably heard, we have a new addition to our class Sonic the hedgehog (personally, I like Harry Sonic, Jr., but the students didn’t seem to understand my humor). He is slowly getting settled in.  We will be interacting with him much more as he settles in.