Please take a minute a check out all that has been happening in fourth and fifth grade this year.

August/September Newsletter

Want to come back to school in the fall and attend our ice cream social? What about having the math department serve you pancakes? If either of these options interest you, please take a moment and check out the information below.

Every summer our students are asked to read and complete math assignments (grades 4-8) to help prevent the summer slide. Below you will find the links needed for these assignments.

Middle School Reading (6-8) – We are asking all students to read at least three books over the summer and be ready to give a Book Talk (directions attached) when they return to school.

Mrs. Marcelino’s Ice Cream Social Summer Reading Log – Students in kindergarten through third grade are asked to read and record 10 picture books or 3-4 beginning chapter books. Students entering fourth through eighth grade are asked to read three chapter books.

Summer ALEKS assignments (4th-8th) – Students in fourth through eighth grade are asked to complete 8 ALEKS assignments over the summer with a score of 90% or higher. If students score lower, they can use the Quick Retake option to simply redo the problems they missed. Assignments can be found in the upper left-hand corner of ALEKS by clicking on the three lines and selecting “Assignments”. It is strongly suggested that students complete the 8 ALEKS topics before working on their personal pie if they are close to finishing their pie so as to not lose their work on the assignments.

Thank you! We hope you have a wonderful summer and look forward to seeing you on Wednesday, August 21st.

I can’t believe the break is over and we are back in school! I hope everyone is well rested and ready to work hard. I’m excited to be back and ready to move ahead in all subjects. The next two weeks the school is having STAR testing. We will begin our testing next week on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. I felt beginning this week was a little stressful with just returning back from break, getting two new students, field trip on Wednesday, etc, etc. Next week we will be ready both mentally and physically.

As I’ve mentioned previously, and I’m sure your children have shared with you, we have two new students in our class. They are visiting for three weeks here from Korea. We are so happy they’re here sharing our classroom with us. I hope they will enjoy their stay here with us.

*IMPORTANT INFORMATION* – PLEASE READ

Field Trip

When we go on our field trip to Mission San Juan Capistrano we will gather at school at 7:45 and drive to the Solana Beach train station. We will take the 9:00 am train to San Juan Capistrano.

I DO need a couple of drivers to take other students now that we have two extra students. If you are able to take other students with you please let me know ASAP and how many you can take. We will need to meet as a group, where we will need to line up on the platform prior and the elevator or journey down can take a bit.

Students should wear jeans and their Stella Maris Academy polos and sweatshirts. If there is rain, they will need a rain jacket. Please pack a sack lunch for the day with snacks for the train as well. Some students have enjoyed bringing card games and things for the train trip. Please no cell phones .

We will be returning on a later train, the 1:49 train. This train will arrive in Solana Beach at 2:42 and then we will make our trip back to school from there. This will make us arrive at school after pick up at around 3:30, so plan accordingly.

Here is a brief overview of what’s to come for the week of January 7th:

Religion:

We will be discussing Chapter 11 – ”The Third Commandment”. In this chapter, the students will learn that we follow the Third Commandment by Remembering to Keep Holy the Lord’s Day .

Math:

In Math, we have finished Unit 3. The children did quite well on the Division Test. I was very happy with the outcome. Now we will be continuing on to Unit 4: Properties and Algebraic Notation with Expressions and Equations.

Literature:

We are continuing to read our new book called: By the Great Horn Spoon. We have currently read chapters 1-4 already. Now the children are busy answering comprehension questions which we share out every day as we all catch up. Next, we will read Chapters 5 and 6. We will continue implementing our knowledge using different Reading Strategies throughout the book.

Writing/Grammar:

This week we will continue to work on Informative writing and our research skills as we continue to work on our California Mission reports. My goal is to have these papers done and turned in by January 17th. That gives the children two weeks to finish and finalize their papers. I will be sharing the rubric that I will use to grade their papers this week to give them an idea of what I’m looking for in their final product.

In Writer’s Workshop, the students will be working in a group rotation setting, working on “Figurative Language”. Also, we will be developing more poetry and using our spelling words to create a paragraph about our New Year’s Resolutions.

Social Studies:

We will be finishing our discussion of the Spanish explorers who set out to find new land and who have found the West Coast: Alta California, establishing our first Missions and cities, we now know, along the way. We will be focusing this week on “Missions, Presidios, and Settlements”. After coming back, I realized the children need a little more review on this chapter, so we will be doing some individual work, as well as, some fun group work to understand what they’ve learned so far.

Science :

We will be doing a fun experiment involving snow and snowflakes. I’m sure the kids will come home and tell you about it, because it is pretty fascinating.

Announcements and Dates to remember:

• January 8th – Pizza Lunch

• Jan. 9th (7:45-3:30) – Field trip to the Mission of San Juan Capistrano

• Friday, January 11th – 9:15 All School Mass —- NOTE time change!!

• Monday, January 14th – Monday Morning Mass

• Tuesday, January 15th – STAR testing (Reading)

• Wednesday, January 16th – STAR testing (Math)

• Thursday, January 17th – 8:10 Student on the Month

              STAR testing (Make-ups)

• Friday, January 18th – No School

• Monday, January 21st – No School

Please don’t hesitate to email me if you have any questions or concerns. I check my email quite regularly.

Thank you again for all you do to help your children!

God Bless all of you!

Have a wonderful week!!

Hi parents,

I am writing to remind you of a few things this week and to let you know some things that are currently happening in 4th grade.

As you may have read in Mrs. Lowell’s letter last week, Mrs. McGarry is retiring this year. I hope you can join us at our Night of Art and Music and see your child’s artwork. It is always a wonderful event with some of our students singing and our band will also be playing!

Thursday

Night of Art and Music with a reception starting at 5 pm

Friday

Student of the Month assembly at 8:15

Talent Show – NEXT WEDNESDAY, 5/16, 1-3 in the Parish Hall

Religion

We are moving on to the eighth commandment and will soon be starting our Whole Life Curriculum. It would be wonderful if you could send a baby picture of your child. In fourth grade, the focus of Whole Life revolves around all of us being made in God’s image and how we are all unique. The most we discuss is a baby’s development in the womb. No pictures. We just talk about things that happen for all of us – a heartbeat at 22 days, 6 weeks – ears and lips begin to form… etc. We talk about how we all hit these same milestones but look at how different we all are. It is fun for them to see each other’s baby pictures as well. We read Sneetches and continue to discuss our uniqueness as well as discussing mistakes we might make in regards to similarities and differences with others. We talk about all the adventures God has planned for each and every one of us. Please let me know if you have any questions.

You can check out some of the overviews here: http://www.wholelifecurriculum.com/elementary-school/scope-sequence/

Math

We have moved on to our last unit of math – Geometry. Today we reviewed acute, obtuse, and right angles and how to write about angles, rays, lines, line segments, and points. Tomorrow we will begin utilizing our protractors and measuring angles. We will be learning about triangles and how to name them by their sides and their angles. We will continue our unit with learning about various quadrilaterals and lines of symmetry.

Language Arts

We have been focusing on opinion/persuasive writing this trimester with students writing about whether cats or dogs make better pets. They also had to write a quick persuasive letter to me to convince me of the best book, color, sports player, etc. We are currently working on an essay convincing the reader that plastic is bad for our world. We read an article in Time for Kids about this and students need to include some facts and statistics from this article in their essays.

We have been working on comma use this week and combining sentences. We will also be working on determining the meaning of various idioms and proverbs.

Reading

We are currently reading Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH we are keeping track of the character development of Mrs. Frisby and learning about these secret rats and how they came to be on the FitzGibbon’s farm.

We recently learned about point of view and the different types of narrators. In the coming weeks, we will be doing a lot of comparing and contrasting different themes and topics in short stories and articles. Students will continue to work on some informational standards in regards to the author’s use of reasons and evidence and work on the ability to talk about the various structures of non-fiction articles.

Hi parents,

The school is hoping that fourth and fifth graders read 5 books over the summer and record them on the sheet provided to your student this week. I know a lot of papers came home this week, so I am attaching it just in case it has been misplaced. If they read 5 books and submit the paper in the fall, they will attend the Ice Cream Social in September.

Also, your child is asked to complete 8 ALEKS assignments over the summer. These are already available to them. I would suggest they complete the assignments before finishing their ALEKS pie because then I will need to reassign the assignments. Each assignment has about 20 questions and students need to complete each assignment with a 90% or better. There is a quick retake option that will allow them to only redo the problems that they missed. Some parents have expressed that they don’t know where to locate the assignments. In the upper left hand corner of the ALEKS home screen there are three lines.Click on that and then click on Assignments. These assignments shouldn’t take very long and should just keep their math skills fresh for the new school year. Please see the letter below from the math department.

Over the summer it is recommended that each child work on ALEKS as frequently as possible. ALEKS work should become part of your child’s routine at home learning during the summer months. This summer assignment for ALEKS is to complete 8 ALEKS Assignments from June 19th until August 18^th. Each will be made available all summer long for your convenience (as we know some families travel during some of the summer months).  Students are also encouraged to continue to work on their persona lALEKS Pie this summer. Once school begins again, your child will be given a new personal ALEKS Pie to work on for the coming year. These summer assignments will be given as your first grade of the new school year.  Additionally, those students who complete the summer assignments with a score of 85% will be included in a start of year pancake breakfast. The math teachers will serve you as a thank you for taking your math learning seriously!

Sincerely,

SMA Math Department

If you need your child’s username and password, please feel free to email me. Also, if they finish their pie over the summer, email me and I will move them up. I will have access to all of their accounts until August.