Newsletter January 31, 2013

Happy (almost) February!

Here are a few important dates to put on your calendar:

February 15 - Early Release at 2:10

February 20-21 - 3rd grade Reading TCAP

March 1 - Field Trip to Manitou Cliff Dwellings

March 4-22 - DIII - DV TCAP and makeup days; 3rd grade will take Math and Writing tests at this time.  4th and up will take all (Math, Reading and Writing, plus Science for 5th and 8th)

April 24 - Science Fair Projects Due

Science Fair Projects

February is just around the corner, and we hope that students have determined what questions they would like to answer for their Science Fair projects.  With a month of time to work on this project under their belts, students should also have a hypothesis prepared and have done a bit of research to help them in creating experiments that will answer their questions.  These portions of their science fair boards should be planned out, and perhaps even done in draft at this point.

During the month of February, students should be planning out their experiments, and gathering observations and data.

Here is a link to the Science Fair planning packet you were provided at conferences:  

http://www.hollyschools.org/www/Holly/site/hosting/sciencefairguide12.pdf 

We expect that students will be analyzing concepts that truly interest them, and that the design of their experiments are unique and demonstrate the kind of advanced and creative learners we know them to be.  As your student works through this process, please help them to prepare their science fair board so that it presents both a neat and creative appearance.  We expect the work to be student created, however helping students with the finer points of board organization at this age is most helpful.  

Science fair projects will be due April 24.

LifeSkills

Dr. Ricotta's students have been discussing conflict with peers and how to solve problems together.  They are exploring four problem solving steps and are in the process of creating their own unique "Problem Solving"posters to keep in their binders. Ask your child to share it with you!

Students have started analyzing what "Leadership" really means in Ms. Brown's room.  What does it look like to others?  What does it sound like to someone outside of our learning environment?  How can we recognize the five leadership skills in ourselves and others?  Modeling the way, enabling others to act, inspiring a shared vision, challenging the process, and encouraging the heart--how can we make those part of our everyday lives?  During Care and Compassion Month, we will continue to explore these characteristics of leadership and tie them to the FISH! Philosophy.

World of Math

Ms. Brown's class is currently analyzing fractional parts of the whole, learning how to write fractions properly, and recognize them in both written form and regional models.  As this unit progresses, students will explore equivalent fractions as well as be introduced to the concept of mixed numbers.

Students in Dr. Ricotta's room have just completed an exploration of the use of partial quotients as a strategy to solve division problems and are also beginning their own study of fractions.

Ms. Burns' students are beginning a study of geometry, specifically the use of coordinate grids and ordered pairs.  Playing games involving grids like this, such as Battleship, are fun ways to explore this concept!

Art of Language

Ms. Burns' Language Arts students are continuing their exploration of Frindle by Andrew Clements.  Students are currently making predictions about characters and their motivation, while supporting their predictions with information directly from the text.  One student made a very astute observation that a character from the book often chooses to create his own "drama" to get out of doing work in class!

Dr. Ricotta's students just completed a Reader's Theater integration with Mr. Jesse using excerpts from his own book, The Night the Moon Ate My Room!  Her students performed for Mrs. McKellip's students last week and thoroughly enjoyed the experience of literature from an entirely new direction.  Her students are also in the process of presenting their essays to explain directions to play a game each of them created on their own!

Ms. Brown's students recently completed pantoum poems on topics of their choice, and are currently finding their inner lawyers, infomercial hosts, and editorial writers by studying the art of reasoning and persuasive techniques.  Students will be working in small groups, pairs, and then independently to tackle important hypothetical issues such as later bedtimes for children, required novel studies during summer break, and appropriate snack-times during school in addition to their own ideas.  Hopefully, these reasoning (*ahem*...arguing) skills will transfer to your dinner table conversation!  Feel free to require multi-paragraph persuasive essays from your children!

Historical Inquiry

Students are currently focusing on the geography of Colorado and how it has impacted the lives of the people moving here from other places in the past and present.  We will begin exploring how our unique geography impacts our climate and the living things with whom we share our state in the coming weeks.

As we explore our state's rich history, we have planned a field trip on Friday, March 1 to the Manitou Cliff Dwellings to study an early resident of our area of Colorado, the Anasazi.  Permission slips and other pertinent information will go home in Thursday folders on February 14. The fee for this trip will be $12.00.  Please let your child's homeroom teacher know if he or she will need a sack lunch for this trip as soon as possible.

Due dates for permission slips and payment are not flexible.  All funds and permission slips will be due back to homeroom teachers no later than the Friday prior to the trip--February 22.  Students who do not return both of these items by that date will not be allowed to attend the field trip and will stay at school--no last minute exceptions will be made.  

Welcome back!  Our Big Idea this quarter is "Growth."  Students will be exploring this in LifeSkills classes and content area classes as well.

Important Dates:

January 18 - Upper Division Science Fair

January 21 - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day - No School

February 7 - 12 - Jump Rope for Heart

February 13 - 15 - Third Grade Reading TCAP

February 18 - President's Day - No School

February 19 -21  - Third Grade Reading TCAP Makeups

Conferences and the "Effort" Dilemma

Thank you so much for taking time to meet with us on Friday and Monday for our goal setting conferences.  We appreciate having the opportunity to speak with each of you to review your child's progress and goals for this quarter.  

It has been noted that there was a recurring dilemma with the idea of "effort."  While many letter grades were fine, the scores for effort were low, which troubled both us and you.  The nice thing about our report cards is that effort is now an entirely separate entity, rather than figuring into a letter grade.  While it was great when a student earned a "B" in a class, the question became how the "B" was earned--was it because the material was easy and the student was able to breeze through without much thought?  Or was it earned through hard work, perseverance, and resilience?  We wanted to address that, and thus the "effort" score was born.

For gifted and high-achieving students, the letter grade is important, and the effort score is even more so because for many, school has come easily to them for several years and they were able to easily achieve an "A" without much effort until now. Some are in the habit of giving up easily when things get difficult, and some still have the mindset that effort is not important.  Students have a copy of a matrix in their binders in the "life skills" section to help them rate progress, effort, and behavior. It is posted in each classroom and will be used by all teachers to facilitate a reflection at the end of each class period.  Please review it so that you are clear with what each rating means, and feel free to ask questions as needed. Note that behavior is a part of this reflection.  Each class period, whether they are in homeroom or with another teacher, students are to record the day's lesson objective upon arrival as part of their welcome work.  When lessons are introduced, this objective is stated and referred to throughout the lesson.  By the end of the lesson and that day's work, students should be able to "rate" themselves through both a letter grade AND an effort grade, as well as evaluate their behavior during class.  They will be required to write this in their planner and then will be able to discuss it with you each evening.  

We are beginning to place more responsibility on our students, particularly those going into Division IV, because they must learn to take on the responsibility of informing their families about what they are learning, what their assignments are, and what the expectations are regarding work needing to be done at home, projects, and upcoming events.  When students reach the upper divisions, the students will be your primary source of information, not their teachers.  They must learn to be responsible for their own work, projects, and learning.  The adults in their lives can facilitate this, but it is not up to us to ensure that their work, projects, and learning happens.  As teachers, regardless of grade level, we will always provide the information students need in order to complete assignments, projects, and be successful, however as they grow older, information will be given more and more to the student, rather than to their parents via email or other methods, in order to prepare students for the time when their work is solely the responsibility of the learner or worker.

Each evening, take 10 minutes to review your child's planner with them.  Ask what he or she learned learned, the level of mastery the child feels was attained, and what kind of effort was put into whatever assignment was given.  It is your opportunity to discuss what your child is learning with him or her.  Know that we review planners as well, though not in a conference scenario with your child.  We do assess both student's feelings on mastery of the lesson AND their effort, though it looks much different in the classroom than it will for you and your child across the dinner table.  

Science Fair  

The project itself will be due on the 25th of April.  The FAIR will be held in the gym during the day of the 26th.  As a reminder, the judging that is done by outside judges is NOT used for grading purposes -- our DIII rubric (which will come via email separately later this week) is completely different, as we are looking for different elements in our students' projects.  Understand that this project is not intended to be a "parent project."  All work should be completed by the student with facilitation as needed by an adult at home.  If the parent is facilitating (e.g. helping to locate information and research at the library, helping prepare the board to ensure neatness, assisting the student in creating graphs from the data collected using a computer program, etc.) that is fine.  At no time however, should the parent be the primary scientist or worker on the project. While we want the end result (board, scientist's journal, data tables, etc.) to be neat and free of errors, it must also be the work of a third or fourth grade student and that student must be able to discuss their experiment fully. 

Life Skills

In addition to learning to rate ourselves both for mastery as well as effort, we will be analyzing the idea of growth from a social standpoint, learning how to handle conflict, solve problems, demonstrate assertive behavior, and deal with bullying issues if they arise.  We will also investigate the FISH! Philosophy, Big 5 Leadership Skills, Habits of Mind, fallacies, and other thinking and social skills between now and the end of the school year.  

World of Math

Ms. Burns' class is working with fractions, decimals, and percents currently and will take the progress check next week. 

Dr. Ricotta's class has started Unit 6, which begins with an introduction to division. Using diagrams to help set up story problems slowly introduces the students

to the relationship of multiplication and division.  Family letter and study links were sent home on Tuesday of this week and can found in their binder.  Please note, study links are now mandatory!

Ms. Brown's class will spend the next two weeks learning strategies for learning multiplication and division facts.  Home Links and other information on this unit went home Friday in students' binders and by email.  

Art of Language

Dr. Ricotta's class is beginning this quarter with a CREATE A GAME project that will emphasize nonfiction writing skills and imagination. Students are to create their own title, objective, number of players, age appropriateness, contents, rules, and scoring.

Upon directions being completed, they are free to design and create the actual game. 

Choices are board games, dice games, card games, floor games, etc.  The only limitation is their imagination without violence.

Ms. Brown's class has started their study of Caesar's English, and are using English translations of Latin sayings and phrases as the basis for their four-level sentence analysis each day as they study the correlations between Latin, English, and some Spanish words as well!  Students have also begun an analysis of poetry, looking for patterns of change and growth.  Our first poem is "all ignorance tobaggans into know" by e.e. cummings.  Students had incredible connections to and analysis of this poet's metaphor for learning! We will finish up the literature web for this poem next week and begin a study figurative language using this poem, as well as "In the Windowsill" by Mary Pleiss.

In Art of Language, Ms. Burns' students will be starting their very first "Book Club," reading the book "Frindle" by Andrew Clements.  They will analyze vocabulary, create meaningful sentences, compose reflections about what they read, and discuss the story together in small groups periodically.

Scientific Inquiry

In your child's planner in the science section, you will find a Lab Report template we have been using this week (blank one also attached, to be used for the science fair or modified if the scientist wishes).  Please review it with your child for each experiment we have done in class.  We have done these experiments together as a whole class, in small groups, and in partners.  Our focus in science this quarter is the actual "write-up" of our use of the scientific method: the experiment, data, results, and conclusion, to ensure that all scientists can recreate our experiment to check its validity and to perhaps take our ideas further.  As the quarter progresses, we will do other in-class experiments as well with this same focus in mind.

Historical Inquiry

The primary standard for fourth grade social studies involves the exploration of Colorado History.  We will spend the majority of the third quarter learning about our beautiful state.  While the topic does not change, our approach to it must from  year to year.  This year we have chosen to use a workbook to facilitate our study in addition to research and other activities in class.  We are hoping to have a field trip relating to our study of Colorado before the end of the quarter or shortly thereafter.  We will keep you posted on where and when, as well as costs as we have that information available.  

Handwriting

Students who need to build foundational fine motor skills to improve their handwriting are working with Mrs. Burns two to three times per week.  Division III students who have not yet mastered cursive, using it as their primary handwriting, work with Dr. Ricotta to learn the basics of cursive handwriting.  Students who have demonstrated mastery (or close to it) of cursive handwriting are working with me to further develop this skill as well as learn calligraphy, the art of "beautiful writing."  Some will also begin typing practice during our handwriting time within the next few weeks.  This will continue through the end of the school year.