Week #13 Update!

I am feeling very thankful to be given the opportunity to teach your kind, witty, and fun-loving girls! I am truly blessed to be a part of the St. Catherine's community!

This will be a quick wrap up of our short week. In Language Arts, the girls worked on their Book Reviews and their Buncee Presentations. They are doing a really nice job with this project! We will pick back up with Wordly Wise and Spelling next week. In addition, the girls and I tossed around some due dates for when they should been done reading chapters 2 & 3 in "All of a Kind Family". We decided on Thursday, November 29th.

In math, we worked with fraction strips and discussed equivalent fractions and how to reduce fractions to simplest form. We will continue to talk about these concepts when we return from break.

On Tuesday, the weather was perfect for our walk over to St. Chris. The girls really enjoyed the hands-on math activities. Click here to see pictures from this event.

***We will be visiting the Book Fair on November 28th at 1:10-1:30. Feel free to meet us there or send in money with your daughter****

Reminders and General Information

                                Information needing a parent response is highlighted.

*Parent How-To Videos for accessing Quia, Newsela, and That Quiz!

* Homework- Posted for family planning.

Special Week: No Special Girl this week because it's a short week!

* Carpool Helper- Abigail McKay will represent our class.

Class Leadership Week of 11/26

Ambassadors/Flag Raisers- Serpell and Ruthie

Week #12 Update!

We survived a full week of testing-whew! The girls were troopers, stayed really positive and worked so hard. Thank you to all moms who brought in snacks throughout the week! 

Contrary to what you might think...we actually did do a little bit of teaching and learning this week! In math, the girls participated in a fun activity, which introduced the concept of fractions as division.  The girls lined up outside the classroom, and I placed a different number of Hershey bars on various tables in the room (i.e. at Table 1- had one Hershey bar, Table 2 had two bars etc...). Next, they took turns walking into the classroom and they chose where to stand. Based on the number of girls at each table (and the amount of chocolate), they had to decide where to go.  The chocolate would be divided up among the girls standing at each table, and the goal was to get the most chocolate (of course). When all of the girls decided on a table, we discussed what fraction of a Hershey bar each girl would receive, and then we compared and ordered the amounts to see who would get the most...and the least etc. In the end, I divided up the chocolate equally and all of the girls received the same amount (which some were very happy about and others were not-ha!). Also, I handed back the math tests, and the girls started working on their Error Analysis sheets. We didn't have a lot of time to work on this, so they will go home next week.

In History and Language Arts, we began discussing what life was like back in the early 1900's. The girls took turns reading historical information, and then they "marked up" (a.k.a annotated) the text on a document on their computers. We also had a great discussion about the first chapter of "All of a Kind Family".  Just a reminder that there is an audio version of the book on the Fourthies website (under Language Arts), and the girls are not required to complete the comprehension questions that were handed out.  The questions are provided mainly to help the girls prepare for our in-class discussions. In addition, we started a fun "All of a Kind Family" book report project where the girls will be coming up with hashtags for each chapter and summarizing the events in Google Slides. 

Reminders and General Information

Information needing a parent response is highlighted.

*Parent How-To Videos for accessing Quia, Newsela, and That Quiz!

**The Outreach club is collecting non-perishable food for the 
St. Stephens Food Bank.

The last day to bring in food is Monday, November 19th. 

Click here for more information

*St. Chris Math Expo Tuesday Morning (11/27)- Field Trip Attire 

Homework- There will be NO homework next week as well. Happy Thanksgiving!

Special Week: No Special Week girl for the week of Thanksgiving.

* Carpool Helper- Abigail McKay will represent our class next week!

Class Leadership Week of 11/19

Ambassadors/Flag Raisers- Ruthie and Serpell

Girls: Your blog question is...What is your favorite food to eat at Thanksgiving? Post your answer here.

Week #11 Update!

I can't believe Thanksgiving is only a couple of weeks away! The girls did such a great job on our new collaborative door poster. It looks amazing! "Keep Calm and Gobble On" will be our mantra next week during ERB testing:) The girls also started their own gratitude journal. We will be writing in these every couple of days until the end of the month, and then your daughter will bring them home to share with you.

Mrs. Coughlan's "Draw, Label, Caption"

We did A LOT of writing this week-whew! The girls will be writing their own Narrative stories about an actual event in their life. We discussed how to zoom in on a small moment and then describe it in great detail. I showed the girls an activity called "Draw, Label, Caption" where they will draw and label detailed pictures of the beginning, middle, and end of their stories. This will help them remember the event and include their thoughts, feelings, and anything they saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched etc. They will use each picture to "stretch out" the events in their stories.

Also, the girls started their book reviews this week. They are summarizing the Realistic Fiction books they read last month and then writing an evaluation of the book. We discussed what is typically included in a book review, and we looked at lots of examples of well-written reviews by kids their own age. After they finish writing their reviews, they will create a Buncee presentation that will compliment their review, and they will present it to the class. They are doing an amazing job with this assignment so far.

In math, the girls worked incredibly hard studying for the Unit 2 test. I haven't had a chance to check them yet, so they will complete their Error Analysis sheets next week. In addition, the girls started working on their Halloween Candy Count data projects using Google Sheets. We discussed how to input their data into a Google Sheet and how this application takes the data and creates a bar graph. The girls learned how to give their graphs a title as well as label the x and y axes.

For the next book report, the girls will be reading "All of a Kind Family" by Sydney Taylor.  It is a story about five sisters growing up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the early 1900's. We will be discussing this time period during History as well. They will be required to read the chapters at home,  but if your daughter would rather listen to the chapters, Mrs. McCallum has been kind enough to voice record the book. Her recordings can be found under the Language Arts section of the Fourthies website. There will be no required written homework for this book. However, I did hand out some questions to help the girls begin to think about the types of things we might discuss in class in each week. For the project portion of this activity, the girls will be creating summaries of each chapter in Google Slides.

Finally, we started working on our Fall Tree Geometric Art projects. I am blown away by this group's artistic ability and can't wait to display these out in the hall. The girls will also be writing about things they are thankful for and decorating paper quilt squares.

***On Monday, in honor of Veterans Day, the girls are encouraged to wear red, white, blue!! Jeans are permitted-yay!

***Here is the current ERB Testing Schedule (subject to change...again)

Reminders and General Information

Information needing a parent response is highlighted.

*Parent How-To Videos for accessing Quia, Newsela, and That Quiz!

**The Outreach club is collecting non-perishable food for the 
St. Stephens Food Bank

* ERB Testing the week of November 12-16. See the attached letter from Dr. Kapetanis

*St. Chris Math Expo Tuesday Morning (11/27)- Field Trip Attire 

Homework- There will be NO homework next week due to ERB testing.

Special Week: Julianna King

* Carpool Helpers- Holt and Ryann will represent our class next week!

Class Leadership Week of 11/12

Ambassadors/Flag Raisers- Harper and Mary

Girls: Your blog question is...What is our mantra next week? Post your answer here.

Week #10 Update!

We kicked off the week with a fun "Read-In" event with our Big Sisters. Thank you again for having the girls bring in books on such last minute notice. The girls enjoyed their time together on the playground as well!

In math, we have been hard at work reviewing multi-digit multiplication and long division, and we've had great discussions about the types of errors many of the girls are making when solving these types of problems. Also, the word problems in this chapter are proving to be quite challenging.

Hey girls: how confident do you feel about multi-digit multiplication, division, and the word problems in this chapter? Fill out this Google Form to let me know your thoughts!! If you don't have time to fill it out over the weekend, you can complete it Tuesday morning. Share your answers with mom or dad!

The test is currently scheduled for Thursday, November 8th. On Tuesday, I will chat with the girls to see if they feel they could use more time to review these concepts. We are ahead of the other classes, so we have some wiggle room to adjust things if needed. In the meantime, I highly recommend having your daughter complete pages 76-80 in the workbook, and taking the time to talk through the problems with her.

We started reading and reciting poetry this week. The girls learned about the literary devices alliteration, personification, and simile. After we read through the poem together, the girls chose a landscape image and wrote their own poem or descriptive paragraph. Many girls volunteered to read their poem aloud to the class and a few wanted me to take pictures of their poems to share with you on our blog. Click here to see the additional poems.  

Most of the girls completed their narrative stories about a witch's spell during Writing Lab on Wednesday.  During that time, I met with a few girls individually to read through their writing, and we came up with some goals to focus on for the next few weeks. They wrote their name on a sticky note and placed it on our class Writing Goals bulletin board. 

We had such a great time during our Halloween party on Wednesday (a huge thank you to Mrs. Spiller and Mrs. Edmunds for helping out with the craft)! However, the highlight of the day was seeing the girls get creative with their Wordly Wise costumes.  Click here to see all of the costumes. Hey parents...can you guess the WW word? Click here to take a quiz. If you need a list of all the WW words, click here. Have fun!

Reminders and General Information

                                Information needing a parent response is highlighted.

*Parent How-To Videos for accessing Quia, Newsela, and That Quiz!

* Homework- Posted for family planning.
* ERB Testing the week of November 12-16
* Halloween candy tally sheet due Wednesday

Special Week: No Special Girl this week because it's a short week!

* Carpool Helpers- We have the week off!

Class Leadership Week of 11/5

Ambassadors/Flag Raisers- Maeve and Sophia

Girls: Your blog question is...What was your favorite WW costume? You can't choose your own:) Post your answer here.