Classroom Updates

Happy Friday fourth grade families,

Vista del Sur Tigers Curriculum and Materials Pick-up in the Gym on 8/24, 8/25, and 8/26: The parent will be asked to park, walk up to the gym and visit their student’s grade level table for materials. *Masks will be REQUIRED. Only one parent is permitted.

A through D Monday, August 24th    8:00-10:00 A.M.

E through H    Monday, August 24th    1:00-3:00 P.M.

I through L    Tuesday, August 25th    8:00-10:00 A.M.

M through P    Tuesday, August 25th    1:00-3:00 P.M.

Q through T    Wednesday, August 26th    8:00-10:00 A.M.

U through Z    Wednesday, August 26th    1:00-3:00 P.M.

Math: We completed Chapter 1 this week! Great job, 4th grade! After completing all lessons, we spent time reviewing the concepts we learned and took our Chapter 1 assessment on Friday. We will begin Chapter 5, adding and subtracting decimals, next week.

ELA: This week we continued reading our novel Night of the Spadefoot Toads. We spiraled back to previously taught concepts during our class discussions and interactive slides, including: comparing and contrasting two or more characters and settings, how setting influences characters, determining the meaning of challenging words within a text, and evaluating the meaning of figurative language & analyzing the author’s purpose for using it.

For writing, we focused on writing a narrative story. Using the author of our novel and my personal writing as a model, students learned how to establish a situation, develop a character, create a sequence of events, develop setting, and include dialogue in their stories. In order to make the assignment manageable, I chunked the assignment into 5 days, and guided students throughout the writing process. I was blown away by their creativity!

Science:

In science this week we finished up our chapter on the growth and development of animals. Students took the chapter assessment today. Grades will be updated on Monday and retakes and make ups are still to be determined. Next week, we will begin our new chapter in science about physical features of animals. The primary focus of this unit will be to classify animals.

Social Studies:

We delved into the agricultural practices of the Mayans this week. Students learned about the types of crops that sustained the Mayan population as well as how their location allowed them to interact and trade with other tribes nearby. We will continue investigating this ancient and fascinating civilization by investigating details about their religious practices.

NWEA:  Testing begins on Monday. On these days of testing, please ensure that your child gets a good night’s sleep, eats a healthy breakfast, and joins Google Meet for testing on time. The Google Meet link will be in your student’s homeroom teacher’s Google Classroom. Please find a quiet space for your child to take the assessments.  Some of the tests will require headphones.  If you have a pair, please set them next to your child’s device during testing. It is important for children to complete the assessments without help from caregivers. While it may be tempting, please do not help them with their assessment.  This is to measure where they are at so we can best support their learning in the future.  Students will work through a self-paced nearpod for one of their subjects each day after testing. This means that students will not be having all three classes during  our testing schedule.

We hope that you have a wonderful, restful weekend!

-The fourth grade team

Happy Tuesday fourth grade families!

Happy Friday fantastic fourth grade families! 

We hope you have had a great week! We have enjoyed diving into content this week with students. They have shown patience and perseverance as we navigate distance learning. As a friendly reminder, if your student misses the Live Lesson they will need to complete the Student-Paced Lesson before 8am the following morning in order to be prepared for the next day’s learning. This includes completing the interactive slides within the presentation such as poll questions, open ended questions, and fill in the blank activities. Not only is this how we track attendance, but it also shows us a student’s level of understanding of the concepts being taught.

Lastly, we request that students have their cameras on so that they can participate in the lesson by using their Vista hand signals (agree, disagree, building on, etc.). This also allows us to provide immediate feedback to students using Class Dojo based on their engagement and participation. 

Math: This week, we have been learning about decimal place value and how to write decimals through thousandths. The students have all been working so hard on these new concepts. We will finish up Chapter 1 next week with comparing and ordering decimals and will have our Chapter 1 assessment on Friday, August 21. 

ELA: This week we continued reading our novel Night of the Spadefoot Toads. Overall, students really seem to enjoy the text and discussing the development of the characters as they face various challenges. Understanding the challenges characters face and how they respond to these challenges is going to support students when we begin to analyze the themes within the novel. Using the text, we have also analyzed the author’s craft and structure when it comes to figurative language and determining the meaning of challenging words. Today, I introduced the concept of external and internal conflict within characters. We will continue to go back to these concepts throughout the novel and year. Definitions, videos, interactive games, etc. can be found on the Stream for students to practice, if they would like.

For writing, we focused on point of view and what third person limited point of view sounds like when we are the author. Students had the opportunity to choose a part of the novel and rewrite it in a third person limited point of view from the perspective of a character other than Ben. This allowed students to be creative and think critically about what some of the other characters in the text might be thinking and feeling.

Our conventions focus has included: concrete nouns, abstract nouns, proper nouns, common nouns, plural nouns, singular nouns,collective nouns, and adverbs. I will continue to reinforce these skills. 

I have received quite a few questions regarding quizzes and therefore wanted to clarify. When students submit their quiz answers, the computer automatically grades the multiple choice and checkbox questions correct or incorrect. However, it does not give students points for the short & long answer questions. Students are perceiving that they got the question incorrect because they did not immediately receive credit for it, while in reality this just means that it is waiting for me to individually grade those questions and give points based on their answers. I hope this clarifies!

Science:

We have been learning about the growth and development of baby animals and what it takes for them to survive. Students have explored the life cycle of mammals, how some animals change their appearance to become adults, and how different species of animal parents help their offspring to survive and become adults. We will be diving a little deeper into these ideas on Wednesday and Thursday of next week, then students will be ready to assess this chapter next Friday. 

Social Studies:

In Social Studies this week we began our unit on Mesoamerica and the ancient civilizations that resided there. Students have been practicing using map skills to identify physical features and places on a map of South America to better understand the geography of where the Maya lived. Next week, we will begin to really discover the Mayan civilization such as their way of life, religion, and cultural innovations. I am very excited to dig into this unit further as it tends to be a student favorite throughout the year!

We are looking forward to another awesome week next week! Have a great weekend.

-The fourth grade team

Happy Friday amazing fourth grade families! 

Congratulations on officially making it through our first week of distance learning! We can’t begin to express how much we have enjoyed seeing students’ smiling faces this week. It has been a joy to interact with them and also to see them interact with one another. We have spent the week discussing expectations for Google Classroom, Google Meet, Nearpod, and showing ROAR, as well as engaging in team builders to facilitate a feeling of classroom community despite being physically apart. We will continue to show grace and flexibility to our families as we navigate this learning curve. We appreciate the grace and patience that you all have provided us as well. We are looking forward to a fantastic year!

Math: We had a great first week in math! I am so impressed with all the 4th graders and their eagerness to learn. They were all so excited to start our first actual math lesson on Friday. We started with working on place value through millions and will continue next week with more place value concepts. I am still working on some kinks in determining how best to present each lesson, being sure I am able to model new concepts. Thank you all for your support as we are all experiencing this new way of learning together! 

Science/Social Studies: Wow what a great first week! I have really enjoyed getting to know students through our daily google meet sessions and am excited to start our journey of learning together! Going forward we will be having 3 days a week of Science and 2 days a week of Social Studies. So that students know when to log into each of the classrooms we will be following the schedule of:

Social Studies: Monday and Tuesday

Science: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

Our first unit of study in Science will be the growth and development of plants and animals. Students may follow along in their DiscoveryEd techbook. We will be in Unit 4 Concept 1. I encourage students to utilize the resources available to them in the techbook as well as the lessons and resources provided in our live sessions.

Our first unit of study in Social Studies will be a look at Mesoamerica and the ancient civilizations that resided there. This is one of my personal favorite units in Social Studies and I hope students will enjoy learning about it as much as I do. Again, students will have access to the techbook in DiscoveryEd.

I hope you all have an amazing and restful weekend and I look forward to seeing everyone back on Monday!

ELA: We had so much fun getting to know one another this week through various teambuilders and Flipgrid videos! Today we discussed what skills are important to use while reading and how they help us better understand challenging texts. We began our first chapter of the novel Night of the Spadefoot Toads by reflecting on the main event in the chapter and who the main characters are, so that next week we can dive into comparing and contrasting two or more characters within a text. I will be posting a PDF of the day’s reading on Google Classroom for students to access the text. As we continue to get deeper into the novel next week, we will be analyzing figurative language and discussing themes.

Have a fantastic weekend!

The fourth grade team

Hello 4th grade families!

We really enjoyed talking with you today! We are excited about this school year and getting to know our students! We know that we gave you a lot of information today, so here is a recap:

• Chromebooks and school materials will be distributed this week for students to use at home. We encourage you to pick up materials on the day and time that is scheduled for your last name so that your student is prepared for online instruction.
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• We look forward to virtually meeting you at the time scheduled below!
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Happy Monday Families,

I have some important announcements to share with you.

First of all, Grand Canyon Commitment Letters are due TOMORROW November 26th. We need the commitment letter whether your child is going or not. Please be sure to send this filled out with your child by tomorrow. If you are planning for your child not to attend please fill in their name and simply check NOT attending.

Secondly, there is NO SCHOOL Wednesday-Friday in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. This is new for our district this year so please do not plan on sending your kiddo to school this Wednesday!

Thirdly, if your child turned in their retest paperwork for the About Electricity retake grades have been entered and updated in Parentvue. If your child did not turn in their paperwork there is a note that will inform you of that as well.

Lastly, grades were updated in parentvue this weekend. As a reminder, effort grades cannot be redone for additional credit at it is a reflection of the effort put in during class time. Students are always welcome to correct and resubmit academic work to improve their understanding of the content. However, students must directly share the assignment with the teacher as well as resubmit any digital assignment.

Hello all,

Tomorrow will be our science test over electricity. Today, we reviewed the information that students will need to know. They also were sent home with a study guide to help them study tonight. This will grade will not be on the progress reports but will be added to parenvue by Friday.

I hope all of you are having a wonderful week. This week we have spent quite a lot of time in my class discussing appropriate technology use. We have talked about how posting non academic posts on google slides, documents, sheets, or other applications is in violation to the contract signed by both parents and students at the beginning of the year. It has come to the attention of the 4th grade team that several students are not following the contract guidelines for acceptable use. We have discussed this at length in class but we would love for you to reiterate this at home with your child.

Hey there!

Can you believe that we are one week away from being a quarter of the way through the school year? Wow! It seems like it is going so quickly. With the end of the quarter coming up on Friday it is imperative that students submit any missing assignments asap so that I can review and update their grades in Parentvue. Students had two complete class periods last week to work on any missing assignments they may have had for my class.

This week, we are continuing to look into the lives of the Aztec Empire. Students have learned so much through close reading about this group of people, as well as participating in a simulation that allowed them to see what life could have been like as an Aztec soldier. We are culminating all that we have learned into writing an informative essay about the lives of the Aztecs. (This will be a grade in 2nd quarter)

On Wednesday, we will be having a $1 dress down and all of the proceeds will be going to help fund our annual Red Ribbon week. If your child chooses to participate please have them ready with their dollar when the bell rings. Students must also follow dress code guidelines outlined in the handbook or they will be asked to call home for a change of clothes.

Friday, October 4th students will be participating in JA day. Students will be presented different lessons from the Junior Achievement curriculum by a parent volunteer. Students always enjoy this activity and I know they will this year as well!

Next week is Fall Break! I hope you all enjoy your time and get some relaxation in with the nice weather we have been having! Have a wonderful week everyone!

Hello all,

I hope that you have had a restful weekend. I had a wonderful time watching some basketball this weekend. The past few weeks in science we have been focusing on adaptations. On Friday, students participated in a lab activity where they tested out different types of bird beaks to see what food source they were best suited for. Students really enjoyed this activity and took away a lot of valuable information.

This week we are headed back to Mesoamerica to learn about the Aztecs. Students will be participating in an activity where they will have to create a model for the floating gardens that the Aztecs were known for. They will also have to create an informational brochure to inform others about life in the Aztec Empire.

Reminders:

• $1 dress down on Friday
• Book orders are due by Monday. Order online at scholastic.com/bookclubs using the code R9VY3