Week of January 27

Hi Families!

Winter NWEA testing will continue this week in our classroom.

Monday 1/27 (B Day):
-Media Center - don't forget your library books!
-Pennies for Patients begins (goes through 2/14 - Please see information below)

Tuesday 1/28 (C Day):
-Art

Wednesday 1/29 (D Day):
-Late Start
-Art and P.E.

Thursday 1/30 (E Day):
-Music

Friday 1/31 (F Day):
-Music
-Class color day: 4th graders wear blue!

Upcoming important dates:
1/13-1/31 - Winter NWEA testing
1/29 - Late Start
2/5 - Late Start
2/12 - Late Start
2/14 - Valentine's Day Party and Ice Skating at Howard Ice Arena
2/27 - LEGO Night in the Brown School Gym 6-7:30pm

A few reminders and things to note:
1. The February Class Calendar will come home on Friday in Friday Folders.
2. Please be sure to look through your students Friday Folder every Friday, sign the bright green Friday Folder form and return to school on Monday.

While we make it a point to celebrate kindness at Brown School everyday, next week is officially Kindness Week!  We will all be "Kindness Spotters"...looking for those random acts of kindness  around us. 
In February, we will be celebrating again with a traditional Valentine's Day class party! If you'd like to sign up to chair or help out, please click here for the sign up page: VALENTINE PARTY SIGN-UP.  Our party will be held on Friday, February 14th, from 1:00 - 2:00 p.m, as we will be ice skating in the morning at the Howard Ice Arena, and then have gym and art at the end of the day.  The kids will be exchanging Valentines (I'll send home a Valentine list in the Friday Folder this week) and celebrating friendship!  

Morning meetings!  Have you heard about our morning meetings?  Every day, we begin our day with a morning meeting.  We gather together to go through our agenda, celebrations and any concerns we have:

1) School or classroom news/announcements

2) Celebrations!  Students can share things that are going on in their lives...sports, family birthdays, school accomplishments....all kinds of happy news! Each student has a letter day where they get to shine!

3) Mindfulness and Success Hotline We talk about mindful seeing, breathing, etc. and discuss ways to handle stressful situations. We also talk about the success hotline message that Mrs. Hassenger listens to each morning.

It's been a great way to start our mornings!

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Part of our Daily 5 experiences each week include "Word Work".  Not only do students build working vocabulary with 4 new words each week to define and use, they are practicing naming synonyms and adding illustrations with tech skills. Word Work is done on Google Slides and posted on our Google Classroom page. Students submit their work and view their scores digitally as well.

NWEA - We've wrapped up our winter NWEA in the area of math, and will finish the reading portion beginning Monday 1/27. We need to have it completed by Friday. Remember...breakfast is important for brain power! Let's come to school charged up and ready to go!

Please don't forget to view the weekly Brown School Blog for additional information: https://brownschoolnewssaintjoseph.blogspot.com/

Mrs. Hassenger

Week of January 21

Hi Families!

Winter NWEA testing will start this week in our classroom.

Monday 1/20 ( Day):
-No School - MLK Day

Tuesday 1/21 (D Day):
-Music

Wednesday 1/22 (E Day):
-NO Late Start today
-Music
-Play It Safe Presentation

Thursday 1/23 (F Day):
-Music
-Mrs. Hassenger out (AM Only for SJPS 4th Grade Teacher Meeting)

Friday 1/24 (A Day):
-1/2 Day - Dismiss at 12:06pm
-P.E.
-Social Emotional Learning (SEL) with Mrs. Van Hekken

Upcoming important dates:
1/13-1/31 - Winter NWEA testing
1/20 - No School
1/24 - 1/2 Day (dismissal at 12:06pm)
1/29 - Late Start
2/5 - Late Start
2/12 - Late Start
2/14 - Valentine's Day Party and Ice Skating at Howard Ice Arena

Variety Show! Sign-up forms came home in Friday folders on 1/17! They will be due by Friday! Mrs. Bawks also has a post with information in this week's parent blog.

Mrs. Nimtz and Mrs. Hassenger - Out Thursday a.m.: Fourth grade teachers from the district will be meeting together on Thursday morning at Upton Middle School to work on curriculum. Mrs. Nimtz and I will return at lunch time and be back for the afternoon.

This Week:

Our class will participate in the "Play It Safe" program this Wednesday afternoon, January 23rd. Trained professionals will lead the lessons. The following is an excerpt from the Brown School blog. Please read the more in this week's link: https://brownschoolnewssaintjoseph.blogspot.com/

As posted in Mrs. Bawks' Parent Blog:

PlayIt Safe! Classroom Presentations

Saint Joseph Public Schools is proud to join other school districts across Berrien County in partnering with the Children’s Advocacy Center (CAC) of Southwest Michigan to bring the nationally recognized PlayIt Safe! Program to our schools. Presentations at Brown School will begin the next week.

Play it Safe!® is a child abuse awareness and prevention program that incorporates age-appropriate scripts and movies to teach children how to reduce their risk of sexual and physical abuse, and sexual assault. It teaches them to recognize potentially abusive behavior, provides the tools to respond to threatening situations, and encourages them to report abuse to a trusted adult.

Math - We wrapped up Unit 3 and will move into Unit 4.  The focus of this unit is multi-digit multiplication.  Unit Homelink packets will come home on Tuesday for at-home practice.  The parent letter has lots of tips and information to keep you updated on what we're learning and strategies to help your student.

Social Studies:   In this unit students explore the United States through the social studies discipline of geography. In exploring the United States in spatial terms, students first considered  the location of the United States. They learned about and use a variety of geographic tools such as maps, globes, and satellite images to answer the question “Where is the United States?” Coming up next, students will examine the concept of place relative to the United States. They use songs, stories, photographs, and aerial images to investigate the question, “What is it like there?” and to describe significant physical and human characteristics. Students will also use the concept of regions to compare sections of the United States. They will build on their understanding that regions are defined by common characteristics and explore ways in which the United States can be divided into regions.  Later, students will then compare a region to which Michigan belongs with other regions in the United States using special purpose maps. In doing so, students examine geographic features such as elevation, climate, and patterns of population density in the United States.

Reading/ELA:  We have spent much of the last two weeks working on summarizing text by using two key strategies.  The first strategy used in summarizing includes the acronym: SWBS (Someone - Wanted - But - So) which would sound and look something like this:  

     (someone)                    (wanted)                                                              (but)

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted people of all races to be treated equally, but 

                                                                                            (so)

the laws did not permit this.   Dr. King worked peacefully so that people could 

live in harmony with each other.

The other strategy we learned was to identify KEY WORDS from an informational text and include these words in our summaries.  We will continue to work on summaries and grammar throughout this week.

Writing: 

Paragraph of the Week!  Students are working on writing to task through a writing prompt of the week.  It's so tempting to want to write entire stories, but the goal here is to write concisely and stay on topic.  This is a challenge for many and will take practice.

Students work on their writing during Daily 5/ELA classroom time and have the entire week to complete their paragraph. We took 2 weeks to work on the last one with coaching from me. More information will follow when students start being released to work on these more independently.

We had LOTS of students pass levels in Lexia/Core 5 this week!
We also had our 2 more Multiplication Station finishers; congratulations Ashlyn and Kavya! They successfully memorized and passed all multiplication levels through 12's.

Please don't forget to view the weekly Brown School Blog for additional information: https://brownschoolnewssaintjoseph.blogspot.com/

Mrs. Hassenger

Week of January 13

Hi Families!

We had an amazing first week back! It was so great to get back into a routine and your kiddos did AMAZING with the transition back to school; thank you for all you do!

Monday 1/13 (E Day):
-Music

Tuesday 1/14 (F Day):
-Music

Wednesday 1/15 (A Day):
-Late Start
-P.E.

Thursday 1/16 (B Day):
-Media Center (don't forget your library books!)

Friday 1/17 (C Day):
-Art

Upcoming important dates:
1/13-1/31 - Winter NWEA testing
1/15 - Late Start
1/20 - No School
1/24 - 1/2 Day (dismissal at 12:05pm)
1/29 - Late Start
2/5 - Late Start
2/12 - Late Start
2/14 - Valentine's Day Party and Ice Skating at Howard Ice Arena

Reminder:

Don't forget to sign the green Friday Folder sheet

(and empty the "keep at home" side of their folder) for Monday!

*NWEA:  We will be taking the winter version of the NWEA assessments in the areas of math and reading.  This will give us an idea of progress made thus far, as well as give teachers the data we need to know as we move forward with instruction.  Times will vary over the next few weeks. It's always helpful to make sure your student eats a nutritious breakfast every day and has a snack available for the school day.

Social Studies:  Last week we talked about how we can think like a geographer. We asked questions like, "Where is it?" and "What is it like there?"
Students located the United States on desk maps and listed all the different ways we could describe the location of our country...for example:
1. In North America
2. north of the equator
3. south of Canada
4. between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans....and many more....
We will continue to discuss how the United States is divided into regions, and focus on the physical characteristics of our country by studying landforms.

Math:  We are continuing with unit 3 this week.  We needed to review what we had learned about decimals a bit more after coming back from vacation.  We are looking at wrapping up Unit 3 with our assessment on Friday (a study guide will come home on Wednesday but you can begin reviewing for the test by going back through the Unit 3 Home Links).

New Year, New You Party:

A HUGE thank you to Lauren Borre, Bertha Leal and Ellie Park for planning and running our New Year, New You party! We had so much fun making goals, playing games and eating snacks.

I'll be updating all of our Lexia/Core 5 and Multiplication Station passers in next week's blog.

Please don't forget to view the weekly Brown School Blog for additional information: https://brownschoolnewssaintjoseph.blogspot.com/

Mrs. Hassenger

Week of January 6

Hi Families!

Welcome back!

Monday 1/6 (F Day):
-Music

Tuesday 1/7 (A Day):
-P.E.

Wednesday 1/8 (B Day):
-Media Center (don't forget your library books!)
-NOT a Late Start Day

Thursday 1/9 (C Day):
-Art

Friday 1/10 (D Day):
-Art and P.E.
-New Year, New You Celebration
-Popcorn Friday!

Upcoming important dates:
1/10 - New Year, New You Celebration and Popcorn Friday
1/13-1/31 - Winter NWEA testing
1/15 - Late Start
1/20 - No School
1/24 - 1/2 Day (dismissal at 12:05pm)
1/29 - Late Start
2/5 - Late Start
2/12 - Late Start
2/14 - Valentine's Day Party and Ice Skating at Howard Ice Arena

I hope you have enjoyed this wonderful time off with your families!  What beautiful weather we enjoyed, but I'm sure we haven't seen the last of winter!

Please make sure that your student has everything he/she needs to go outside for three recesses every day.  We only stay inside when the temperature is in single digits.  Items need to be labeled!  Very often we see duplicates of hats, gloves, and even coats and snow pants.  Without names inside, it makes it difficult to figure out who they belong to.  Our "lost and found area" grows by leaps and bounds at this time of the year.

Math:  We will be finishing the last few lessons and will take the Unit 3 assessment early next week.   There are two standards that will be assessed in this unit:  

1.  Comparing two fractions with different numerators and different denominators.

2.  Use decimal notation for fractions with denominators 10 or 100.

We will also get back into the routine of reciting multiplication and division facts. After two weeks off, I'm hoping that students were able to squeeze in a little bit of time to practice before heading back to school. Students will also be completing the progress-monitoring assessments (2 minutes, timed) for both multiplication and division.

"Are you ready for school?"

After a holiday, it's often difficult to get back into a sense of routine.  Students may need guidance to remember to pack their backpacks and have the things they need ready to go.  I often suggest packing everything the night before to avoid the early morning rush. Helping your child get in the habit of checking the class calendar and showing you his/her planner each night will help solidify these routines.   Bringing a snack (optional), library books, planners and folders,  winter clothes (boots, snow pants....if needed), and music recorders all needed to be back in the forefront of our students' minds.   Being ready ahead of time will help alleviate any anxiety about coming to school unprepared.

Writing/Language: Grammar instruction will be our focus for the month of January. We will refine our knowledge of parts of speech (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronoun, subject-verb agreement, sentence structure (subject/predicates), and prepositions. In addition, we will work on "writing to a task" by constructing concise paragraphs with topic sentences.

Vocabulary: Each week, students are given 4 vocabulary words to define and practice in their vocabulary notebooks. Before the holiday, we talked about homonyms (words such as hear/here, there/their/they're) and we will continue to study their usage in January.

January class calendars will come home on Monday, January 6th, but you can copy or download your own calendar from this link: 4th Grade: January Calendar

Behavior/Expectations:  I will be reviewing behavior and classroom expectations with ALL students on Monday morning.  I'm grateful to partner with my students' families to foster a positive and safe environment which is conducive to learning, and look forward to the second half of the school year with your 4th grader.  Thank you for your support of our classroom and Brown School.

We had LOTS of students pass levels in Lexia/Core 5 this week!
We also had our 2 more Multiplication Station finishers; congratulations Daniyah and Evan L.! They successfully memorized and passed all multiplication levels through 12's

Please don't forget to view the weekly Brown School Blog for additional information: https://brownschoolnewssaintjoseph.blogspot.com/

Mrs. Hassenger