What a great couple of weeks we've had!

Hi friends!
The Honeybees have been amazing, as usual.  Over the past week and half, they have become relatively proficient with some new digital tools and with being critical readers when it comes to information found on the internet.  Using a social learning network called Edmodo, students have begun to catalog and share links, as well as ask questions and share advice for our biography project. It truly is an era of information sharing.  We also learned to use Glogster, which we will use to digitally create a poster for our projects.


Be assured that as we use new technologies, students are guided through acceptable use of the internet, as well acceptable responses when they feel some thing isn't right.  Edmodo, Glogster and Kidblog are all completely private,  safe and secure EDU sites, which means they have gone through a great deal of scrutiny to be available for educational institutions. It's been fun and we will all be ready to give computers a break at the close of this project.  Balance is really important when it comes to technology use.

Math
After a unit of division concepts, we will take our Unit 6 Test on Tuesday.  Keep workin' on those facts! Next up is fractions.  This can be challenging, so any opportunity for the students to recognize and use fractions outside of school will help.

Word Study
Students have been working on personalized lists of specific patterns so we can begin to close the gaps on our skills.  New  vocabulary words are up and they are really getting the hang of pulling apart prefixes, suffixes, and root or base words.

Writers' Workshop
We recently focused on pronouns, possessive nouns and pronouns, and correct use of apostrophes.  Tricky! Additionally, we are learning to read more like writers, looking for things to try in our own writing.  We talked about writers being decision makers, that writers need to make decisions from topic choice to revision.

Literacy Workshop
Synthesizing, or changing our thinking over time, became our focus.  We used the concrete example of Russian Matryoshka  dolls to represent the change in thinking.  We also focused on information literacy and learning how to read for specific information.

Social Studies
Westward ho!  As we move into the mid-west, we are reading a variety of books about the Lewis and Clark expedition.  We have learned about primary sources, such as journals, and that history is often written from many different perspectives.

Coming up...Maple Sugaring!
Starting right after February break, 4th graders will begin tapping trees!  We will need help with gathering sap and running the boils both after school some days and on the weekends.  Our Sugaring-off party has been set for March 17th and the pancake breakfast date is TBD.  Please let me or Mrs. Elzey know, if you haven't already, if you are interested in helping out with sugaring that month!

Thank you so much for sending your children to school each day ready to learn! Project instructions will be posted to the "Current Projects" tab on this site, new links and important dates are also recently updated.  You are also invited to join us on Edmodo, but you will need a code. If you are interested, ask your child to log in, and there should be a code on the left that says "for parents to join you".

ANY questions- you know where I am!

Jaclyn Karabinas