THE SCOOP ON-LINE

SPELLING: This week’s list features words with vowels in their final syllable. www.mrbrownsroom for the weekly spelling list and ideas for different ways to study spelling words.

READING: Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a long lived story by beloved children’s author, Rudyard Kipling from his collection of stories, The Jungle Book. Set in India over a century ago, it features a tough little mongoose who risks his life to save the human family who took him in.

MATH: 4B kids spent last week multiplying one digit times three and four digits, then moved on to two digits times two digits. Many children found this to be VERY challenging to the point of feeling somewhat upset. But, by the second day, most felt a sense of accomplishment for beginning to master a difficult task. We finished the week by tackling an even more complicated job: two digits times three digits. Next week we’ll move on to multiplying money problems with two digits times two, three and four digit numbers. We’ll close the week out working with all these types of problems in a story problem format. Our unit test will be at the end of the week or the beginning of the following week.

You can find lots of wonderful, interactive games to practice multiplication facts online here at The Scoop in the links section, or at my Fourth Dimension: Math page. One game that focuses on multi-digit multiplication as well as problem solving is called Crack The Code. This is a higher level game though and may be too difficult for some students.

SOCIAL STUDIES: We have begun studying the East region of the country including New England and Mid-Atlantic states from Maine to Maryland.  During a couple of our computer labs last week, kids got to choose from a variety of Internet based U.S. map games at a site called Gamequarium. This will help them a part of this unit, learning to identify states and their location. State capitals are saved for fifth grade.

SCIENCE: Mrs. Folks will be teaching a unit on Earth science including the study of rocks and minerals.

WRITING: The focus of this coming week’s wonderful, amazing writing lessons will be learning to spice up student writing by growing to love adjectives. I have a variety of fun, exciting, cool, incredible writing and game activities to help with this task.

NOTE: Remember that Reading @ Home assignments are due on Monday mornings. This takes some advance planning. Kids are finding that to get in four nights a week, they can’t put it off until the weekend. The Wednesday Reading textbook Reading @ Home assignments are due on Thursday mornings. These also count for the weekly assignment. Happy reading!