THE SCOOP ON-LINE

READING: Our story this week will be about baseball great, Lou Gehrig and how he heroically faced the disease that ended his life. Kids will get to hear a recording of the amazing speech he gave announcing his retirement.

MATH: Having successfully completed our algebra unit, we’re moving on to the study of statistics, including the concepts of mean, median, mode, and range. Ask how raisins helped your fourth grader learn about these topics.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Fourth graders have completed their study of the East Region of the U.S. and are heading down south where they will learn about the geography and history of the Southern Region. Most of them enjoy the U.S. map games at a site called Gamequarium.

SCIENCE: Mrs. Folks will be preparing kids to begin their science projects for the Douglas County Science Fair (PDF), held in February.

WRITING: Kids will get some more practice with adverbs this week, in hopes of helping them to spice up their writing.

NOTE: See you at the music program at PLHS around 6:45 this Wednesday evening.

READING: Our story this week will be an old Mexican folk tale. It’s a funny and imaginative tale about the downside of feeling too self important.

MATH: We finally completed our unit on multiplication of larger numbers. It’s a tough one for most fourth graders. Some children will need to make corrections on their test papers on Monday. If they can do so without help, then I count the score they’ve earned. Those who need extra help will be able to work with our remedial math paraprofessional until they’re ready to take the test a second time.

Our new math unit is an introduction to simple algebra. We’ll start with understanding the order of operations as used in algebra. Also covered this week: variables, inverse opperations and some simple equations. This unit, like the last one, often seems really foreign and challenging to kids. Once they get the hang of it though, it actually becomes fun for them.

SOCIAL STUDIES: Both 4B and 4F kids have been making great progress in learning the state names in the East region (New England and Mid-Atlantic states). If you have a chance you might encourage them to practice state recognition by playing some Internet based U.S. map games at a site called Gamequarium.

We have also been learning about some of the Native American tribes of the area and the beginnings of our constitution and industry in this region.

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

WRITING: Kids will get a bit more practice with adjectives. After a short review of verbs, they’ll move on to adverbs. Both adjectives and adverbs will help their writing become more interesting and help it better express their own personal voice.

NOTE: The Thanksgiving food drive will end this Thursday.

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!