Week of August 20-24

Grade 4 Weekly Newsletter

August 20-24

Curriculum

Reading:

This week we are launching our first reading unit titled, Building a Reading Life. The key overarching goal is to promote a sense of agency about each student’s reading life. To help them understand that they have the power to make reading work or not work for them based on the choices they make. We not only want students to make sense of books, but we want them to allow books to impact their lives. In order to do that students are going to learn to choose Just-Right books and collect data about their reading using their reading logs.

Lesson 1: Learning from the Best and Worst Reading Times

Lesson 2: Making Honest, Important Reading Resolutions

Lesson 3: Finding Tones of Just-Right Books

Lesson 4: Reading Faster, Stronger, Longer

Essential Questions

• How can I take charge of my reading life? 
• What strategies best support and strengthen reading comprehension?

Writing:

Every school year we start off by learning about the writers in our class. We want to know where are our writers now, and how can we guide them to be the best writers they can be. Teachers collect information about their writers by reading over student work. This week students will be asked to write a narrative, informational, and persuasive text on three different given days. Students will spend 45 minutes to plan, draft, revise and edit their writings before turning it in. 

This week’s lessons:

Lesson 1: Narrative On-Demand Writing Task

Lesson 2: Imagining Stories from Ordinary Moments

Lesson 3: Informational On-Demand Writing Task

Lesson 4: Imagining Stories We Wish Existed in the World

Lesson 5: Persuasive On-Demand Writing Task

Essential Questions

• How can I write long and strong and with independence?
• How can I write a fiction story that is similar to published short stories and picture books?

Mathematics:

We are starting Module 1 in Math. This module is where students extend their work with whole numbers. They develop their understanding of place value and number patterns of ten times. 

The lessons are as follows for this week:

Topic A: Place Value of Multi-Digit Whole Numbers

Parent Tip Sheet 

Lesson 1: Growth Mindset/Pre-Assessment

Lesson 2: Enrichment/Math Talks

Lesson 3: Interpret a multiplication equation as a comparison.

Lesson 4: Recognize a digit represents 10 times of the place to its right.

Lesson 5: Name numbers within 1 million by building place value understanding.

Science:

We will begin our first Science unit this week - “A Shocking Experience - Magnets and Electricity.” In this unit, students will become familiarized with magnets and electricity. Students will then create an ‘inquiry project’ and present it to their classmates and parents at our ‘Magnets and Electricity Fair’ at the end of the unit.

We will start off exploring magnets and magnetism, and do several experiments related to this. 

Essential Questions:

• What is magnetism?
• What is electricity?
• What do scientists do when working in a lab?
• How are magnetism and electricity related?

Grade 4 Homework:

Daily homework tasks will be written into student planners each day. Tasks may include reading for 20-30 minutes per night, writing for 10 minutes per night along with additional mathematics work. Homework may differ according to teachers and students. Any mathematics homework that students find challenging please advise their homeroom teacher so they can progress accordingly. Homework is not meant to be impossible, challenging for students to grow their brains, but not impossible!

Upcoming Events

Back to School Night

BTSN is on Tuesday, August 22nd, 2017 at 5:00. We hope to see you there. This is a ‘parent only’ event, and there is no supervision for children. Here is the link to our Grade 4 presentation:

Grade 4 Presentation

Parent Day

Parent Day is on Sunday, August 27th, 2017. Don’t forget to sign up via Skyward. This is a day in which parents are invited to share invaluable insights and goals to help the teacher know your child. Please fill in the questionnaire below and turn it into your child’s teacher by Thursday, Aug. 24th. There is no school for students on that day. This is a ‘parent only’ event but there will be supervision available by the ES playground monitors. 

Detailed Schedule

Parent Day Questionnaire

First Assembly of the Year

Parents are welcome to join the students and their teachers at 7:55 AM on Tuesday in the ES Hall for our first assembly of the year.

News

Guidance News

Dear CAC Families,

Welcome to the new school year! I hope you had an enjoyable and restful summer with your families.

I am excited to be teaching the Grades 3-5 Guidance classes again this year. Guidance is a weekly, social and emotional class period that takes place within the regular classroom. The goal of the guidance program is to build your child’s self-esteem and social skills by giving him/her strategies for solving personal and social problems. Lessons during Guidance focus on community building, learning skills, empathy, friendship, emotion management and problem-solving.

We will begin with community building and learning skills. During these units students will be encouraged to:

• recognize and appreciate personal characteristics and contributions to the class and school community;
• discover the unique characteristics in others and how those differences enrich the class and school community;
• focus attention and learn specific ways to be good listener;
• communicate assertively in order to get personal, academic and social needs met.
  

Please contact me if you have any suggestions or questions about the guidance curriculum. Be on the lookout for Guidance updates in the classroom blogs.

Warm Regards,

Carey Harris

Guidance Counselor Gr. 3-5

charris@g-cacegypt.org 

After School Activities

SIGN UP Starts THIS Monday, August 21st and runs to August 27th. The Signup link will be located on the NEW ASA Website, available on your dashboard. Click on the labeled blue icon (see arrow). Sign up will be open for one week (including the weekend). Schedules will be sent to parents Tuesday September 5 at the end of the day. ASAs begin from Sunday, September 10th and run to Thursday, November 9th.

CAC’s School Store is Being Taken Over By The Booster Club!

CAC’s Booster Club is pleased to announce the NEW  Booster Spirit Store.  This will be THE place to get your new PE uniforms, school supplies, and CAC spirit wear. Located behind Café Greco, you will find a new and larger store with parent volunteers happy to assist you in finding what you need for a fresh new start to school 2017-18!

August Store Hours:  Aug 13, 14 & 15  8:00 AM - 12 noon

                                  Aug 16 - 30  7:45 AM - 12 noon; 2:30 PM - 4:00 PM  

(no weekends)

Expect great new things from the NEW Booster Club Spirit Store next school year!  (Wanna be a volunteer? Find a link in your school newsletter!).

As we are in a year of transitioning over to our new Physical Education uniforms both will be able to be worn for classes this school year.

New HOT LUNCH vendor!

We are very excited to welcome Richoux to serve our elementary students a nutritious hot lunch four days a week in the ES Lunchroom from Sunday to Thursday for LE 38 & fresh juice LE 7 except for MONDAYS.Mondays  alternate  between Koshari and juice for LE 25 and Pizza  1 slice 20 LE, 2 slices 25LE, 3 SLICES 30 LE WITH JUICE AND COOKIE. Koshari will commence August 21. Hot lunch will commence on the first day of school, Aug. 16 and lunch cards will be on sale for new families at our service fair and before school outside the cafeteria. Cash only on Mondays, other days lunch cards must be purchased.

Parent/Student Handbook
Our revised parent/student handbook will be online beginning August. The handbook has been updated and it is the place to go to if you have a question and if you cannot find the answer then please contact the ES Office at 2755 5202 or 2755 5203, or email our executive assistant: mgreiss@cacegypt.org