Plan Ahead:
*March 25- Field Trip to the Museum of Science and Industry-Bring $8.00 or a sack lunch.
*Week of March 29 - Spring Break- Students will return on Monday, April 5
*April 13 - Inventions, contract (with a neatly-drawn colored diagram on back), and grading rubric due. Students need to be prepared to present their inventions to the class. An English grade will be take on their Oral presentations as well as a science grade.
*Thursday, April 15 - Spring Open House. Inventions will be displayed in the fourth grade classrooms during this event.
*Invention Convention - The children will receive an informative letter, contract and rubric on Monday for our annual Invention Convention. They will need to brainstorm an everyday problem and develop an invention to solve this problem. On Thursday, the children will need to bring in their signed completed contract for my approval. They should not begin building their invention until they have my approval.
Math - In math this week we will begin a unit on multiplication of higher numbers. We will review the vocabulary product, factor and multiple. The students will use a basic fact and a pattern to multiply mentally. They will estimate products by rounding factors or using compatible numbers and then finding the product mentally. They will multiply 2, 3, and 4 digit by 1 digit numbers and money by 1 digit numbers. Lessons 9.1, 9.2, 9.4 and 9.5 will be covered.
Spelling- This week the students will review words that have the prefix un and in. Un and in mean the opposite of or not.They should know that the spelling of a word does not change when a prefix is added. Test Friday.
Reading - This week we will wrap up our novel study. The students will have a vocabulary quiz on words from their novel on Friday of this week. They should know the meanings of the words and be able to write them in a good sentence.
Fourth grade students will be reviewing the strategies of clarifying and inferring this week. We will be using a biograpghy called Louis Braille, The Boy Who Invented Books for the Blind. The vocabulary will include: pinpricks, patterns, succeeding, discouraged, simplified, and institute. This reading selection is from our anthology. It is included in a theme called Problem Solvers.
English We will continue to work on our expository writing. The students will work on their closings this week and then put the informaton from the graphic organizer into a rough draft format. They will not take this model to a final draft. Then they will be ready to work with a partner on their next writing. By the end of the week they should be ready to write an expository essay on their own.
Science - This week in science we are beginning a unit on simple machines. The students will learn how simple machines help people do work.
Social Studies - We will review lesson 1 and the students will have an open book quiz on " The Great Lakes and other waterways that connect the Midwest to the world".
The students will learn about the landscape and climate of the Badlands 67 million years ago and why it changed. The will define erosion and describe the way it changes the land. They will define prairie and describe the types of life that live there.
