Email to Parents 3/27

First week of distance learning is complete.  This has been such a learning experience for teachers, students, and parents.  We appreciate all the flexibility and patience.  Everyone has done such a remarkable job during this difficult time.  Keep up the good work moving forward.

We understand that all students work at a different pace, which is what we see in the classroom too.  The teachers are trying to keep each activity very simple and direct, but still aligned to the standard.  We encourage students to take breaks throughout the day and use their skill of the week of dealing with frustration if they seem to be spending too much time on a certain subject or activity.  There will be some work that is just practice for a potential assessment at a later day.

It is extremely important that your child is answering the community time question.  This is how teachers are taking attendance for each day.

Throughout the week, we reviewed several skills from the school year through videos and assignments, including: quoting accurately when supporting inferences, point-of-view, identifying main idea & key details, determining theme, identifying figurative language, determining the meaning of challenging words, and determining text structure. All assignments are posted on Google Classroom, however, you can find a condensed overview of the assignments here. You can also find all email communications from Mrs. Epacs and the fourth grade team during this uncertain time here.

The students started a new standard this week on measurement.  This is a standard that starts in 2nd grade and gets built upon throughout the years.  With the students prior knowledge I felt it would be beneficial to move to that standard.  This week we focused on the customary/standard units of measurement for length (inches, feet, yards, miles) and weight (ounces, pounds and tons).  They needed to be able to solve word problems by converting and comparing.  Next week we will continue with capacity and then move into the metric system.

In Science this week we continued to look at weathering, erosion, and deposition. Students created a concept map to demonstrate the relationship between the processes and agents of these processes. In Social Studies we took a look at the New England and Middle colonies. Students read articles on the colonies and answered comprehension questions about the text with evidence to justify their answers.