Weekly Update!

We had a fun and crazy week full of preparation for our class chapel, which is this coming Monday. The girls honed their speaking and listening skills, practiced working collaboratively, and learned the importance of being flexible. I could see the growth in their confidence throughout the week. They had some great suggestions and I think you will enjoy what we have put together. 

The girls had a little bit of time to work on their Langston Hughes poems, illustrations, and analyses. I encourage the girls to practice reciting their poems at home, and I'm hopeful I will have some volunteers to present this week! 

If your daughter did well on the spelling pretest, I would like her to choose five challenge words for the spelling contract homework over the next two weeks. I didn't have a chance to tell the girls on Friday, but the spelling contract will stay the same for the next two weeks. The directions will be the same (only the due date will change- it will be March 8th). They may choose the same or different activities as last time. The Wordly Wise choice board will stay the same as well. However, I plan to add a couple of options including Charades and something called "Art Show". I will explain these options on Monday. Also, I will be adding a due date to the homework calendar for the persuasive presentations, so be on the lookout for this information.

In math, the girls worked hard on their test corrections. I met with a couple of small groups to review concepts from Unit 4. Moving forward, I plan to include more small group instruction for those who might benefit from additional practice with each concept. 

***It would be helpful if the girls arrived no later than 7:50 on Monday morning*** 

Thanks for your help with this!

Reminders and General Information

Information needing a parent response is highlighted.

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

**Our class chapel is Monday, February 25th at 8:15 in the Lower School Assembly Room. Parents are welcome to attend!

**Grandparents' and Special Friends' Day- Please sign up here. 

**Maypole- A Fourthie Tradition!! All details are here (Fourthie site> Everything Else

** Please consider our play rehearsal schedule when making dental, doctor etc. appointments for your daughter. Practice begins on 3/22.

**Wondering about "Growing Up Healthy" class? Mrs. Blanton has all assignments, lessons, etc. on a website. Take a look here. 

**Final Assembly information is here!

**Homework- for family planning

**Carpool Helper(s)-  Harper, Ryann and Holt will represent our class.

**Special Week- Sophia is our Special Week girl this week.

Class Leadership Week of 2/25/19

Ambassadors/Flag Raisers- Annabelle and Ruthie

Attendance- Paige and Ava Jane

Girls: Your blog question is...Do you have to memorize and recite your Langston Hughes poem(s)? Post your answers here.

Weekly Update!

I can't believe we managed to pack all this fun into one week! Thank you again for all of the food and gifts. The girls were so sweet and made my birthday extra special😃. 

In math, we started off working on word problems and then reviewed all of the concepts in Unit 4 for the remainder of the week. The girls seemed very confident going into the test on Friday, and their scores reflected all of their hard work! They will work on their corrections this week and the tests will go home in their Friday folders. Also, since the girls really enjoy creating their own math problems, I challenged them to write a one or two-step word problem using addition or subtraction of mixed numbers. I told them that I would choose one problem to be included on the Unit 4 test.  

***Congratulations to Sophia! She created the winning math problem.***

In Language Arts, several girls presented their persuasive writing projects. It's been really fun to see their creativity. I left it pretty much open-ended as far as how they would present their information. This week, Elizabeth shared informational video segments she created at home, which showed her riding her bike, jumping on a trampoline and Pogo stick, roller-blading, and bouncing a basketball. Serpell and Sirena typed their information into an online program called typatone.com. Each letter generates a sound, and then they created a dance to go with the music. Finally, Chloe impressed us by having a deep knowledge of her topic, and she enhanced her presentation with a colorful posterboard. At the conclusion of each presentation, the girls had to answer questions from the audience about their topic, and we gave lots of compliments as well! The girls also finished their friendship writing labs and worked on their Langston Hughes poems and illustrations.

In addition, the girls have really enjoyed presenting their Personalized Learning Projects. Mary Michael, Chloe, and Mary surveyed a group of teachers and students to see what they liked best about St. Catherine's School. They gathered, organized, and analyzed their data. Next, they input their data into Google Sheets and generated several graphs to present to the class. Paige, Ruthie, and Elizabeth decided to take pictures of the class to create a photo album for me. They really captured the unique personalities of this awesome group of girls. I am so excited to keep this and will enjoy looking through these photos for years to come!

The girls had so much fun exchanging Valentine's and dressing up as a WW word. I was blown away by the complexity of their Valentine's Day boxes. They clearly spent a lot of time creating those masterpieces. Click here for more pictures from Valentine's Day. Thank you to the families who brought in waters, fun heart-shaped glasses and yummy treats. 

Fyi...the upcoming week will fly by fast! The majority of our time will be spent preparing for our class chapel on February 25th. I am currently trying to plan for the possibility of inclement weather on Wednesday. If the girls really focus during each practice session, we should be ready to go on February 25th. 

Reminders and General Information

Information needing a parent response is highlighted.

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

**Our class chapel is February 25th.

**The Family Life class is currently being taught by Nurse Blanton during our regularly scheduled Science class. Please look for her weekly e-mail updates. Here is the letter from Dr. Kapetanis, which outlines more information about this event. 

**Homework- for family planning

**Carpool Helper(s)-  Harper will represent our class.

**Special Week- No Special Week girl for the short week.

Class Leadership Week of 2/18/19

Ambassadors/Flag Raisers- Sophia and Julianna

Girls: Your blog question is...Have you presented your persuasive report yet? If not, are you ready to present? Post your answers here.

Weekly Update!

We had a very productive week! In Language Arts, the girls have been hard at work on their persuasive writing and presentations. This type of essay is very structured and requires the girls to write a traditional introduction where they state their argument, three paragraphs containing reasons to support their argument, and a concluding paragraph to wrap things up. We had three presentations on Thursday, and I was very impressed with their creativity and level of preparedness. The next writing lab is a fun one where the girls will become owners of a Friendship Business and will design their own Friendship Machine. They will write about what friendship means to them, how their machine works and helps you become a better friend (just in time for Valentine's Day).

We continued discussing a variety of figurative language techniques including idioms, personification, alliteration, similes, and metaphors. The girls will be required to use these terms when analyzing their Langston Hughes poems. In addition, I introduced the next set of prefixes/root words. This time we are focusing on Greek numbers and the root dict-, which means to say or tell. The prefix challenge will be due this coming Friday, February 15th.

In math, we continued discussing multiplying a whole times a fraction. After having some fun with Smarties, we used counters to display our problems and then drew pictures to match our work. Towards the end of the week, we transitioned to writing the number sentences in our composition notebooks. We even touched on how to cross cancel to reduce the fractions before multiplying the numbers together. Please take a look at the checkpoint worksheet in your daughter's packet of papers to see if there are any areas she might need to spend extra time on at home. We will talk about word problems on Monday and Tuesday, and we will spend Wednesday and Thursday reviewing for the Unit 4 test. The test will be this Friday, February 15th.

In History, the girls have been reading several articles in a Newsela text set for Black History Month. Also, they read about famous Suffragettes and wrote about their favorite woman activist. Then the girls explored an interactive map where they chose different countries and recorded when women gained the right to vote in that country. They really enjoyed this activity.

Reminders and General Information

Information needing a parent response is highlighted.

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

**The Family Life class will be taught by Nurse Blanton in February. Here is the letter from Dr. Kapetanis, which outlines more information about this event. 

**Homework- for family planning

**For Valentine's Day- The girls will need to bring in a valentine for each classmate and a box to collect their valentines. They can be as creative as they would like. They are welcome to bring in valentines for girls in other classes as well as any teacher or staff member. Also, we will have another Wordly Wise Dress Up on this day. Put your thinking caps on and get creative! 

**Our class chapel is February 25th.

**Carpool Helper(s)-  Annabelle and Harper will represent our class.

**Special Week- Serpell

Class Leadership Week of 2/11/19

Ambassadors/Flag Raisers- Maeve and Serpell-They will raise and lower the flag again this week, since they did not get a chance to participate much last week).

Girls: Your blog question is...When is our class Chapel? Post your answers here.

Weekly Update!

We just got word that the fourth-grade girls from St. Catherine's fed 633 grateful people in the month of January. Thank you so much for your food donations and for those who gave their time at Shepherd's Way on Wednesday morning. The girls and I got so much out of this meaningful experience. Click here for more pictures from this event.

Math- We wrapped up adding and subtracting related fractions and mixed numbers with a quiz on Friday. The girls should be proud of their efforts to learn this material. I will continue to stress the importance of taking neat,  detailed, and accurate notes as we continue to discuss multiplying a fraction by a whole number and explore more word problems this coming week. 

Language Arts- The girls enjoyed reading the poems Blinded by Sight and Beach Party. Blinded by Sight connects to Black History Month and Beach Party was a great example of the use of symbolism in poetry. It also references the Lost City of Atlantis, so we read some Greek mythology as well. It turns out many of the girls LOVE mythology, so we will plan to read more stories in the future.  In addition, we talked about the life of the African American poet Langston Hughes, and they chose a poem of his to analyze and illustrate. Finally, we discussed several suffixes that are found on the end of nouns (i.e. -ment, -ness, -ence etc.) and the root audi-/aud-. The winner for this week's prefix challenge will be announced on Monday.

We had a Big/Little Sister event on Thursday, and the girls enjoyed playing Yoshi tag in the gym. On Friday, Mr. Tullner led our Cluster Chapel. To kick-off Black History Month, the girls read mini-biographies of prominent black women and shared information about these women. We will be doing several other activities this month to celebrate the contributions and struggles of black individuals throughout history...so stay tuned!

Reminders and General Information

Information needing a parent response is highlighted.

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

**The Family Life class will be taught by Nurse Blanton in February. Here is the letter from Dr. Kapetanis, which outlines more information about this event. 

**Homework- for family planning

**For Valentine's Day- The girls will need to bring in a valentine for each classmate and a box to collect their valentines. They can be as creative as they would like. They are welcome to bring in valentines for girls in other classes as well as any teacher or staff member. Also, we will have another Wordly Wise Dress Up on this day. Put your thinking caps on and get creative! 

**Our class chapel is February 25th.

**Carpool Helper(s)-  Ruthie and Julianna will represent our class.

**Special Week- Ruthie

Class Leadership Week of 2/4/19

Ambassadors/Flag Raisers- Maeve and Serpell

Girls: Your blog question is...What will we be doing on Valentine's Day? Post your answers here.