MRS. KING'S SCHOLARS

The char­ac­ter trait being fea­tured in November-​​December is trustworthiness…true blue! Wear blue on Wednesdays.

Par­ents, please help your chil­dren to remem­ber to bring their parent-​​initialed Clean Slate Chart to class I check it first thing every Mon­day morning.

We have a field­trip to the Chal­lenger Learn­ing Cen­ter in Bal­boa Park sched­uled for Mon­day, Decem­ber 12. We are leav­ing at 9:15 sharp and all stu­dents need to bring a sack lunch. We will return to school around 3:00.

MATH: We take Light­ning Rods tests on Tues­days and Thurs­days. Progress reports are sent home on those days for par­ent ini­tials. Forms need to be returned the next day in order to be updated with the cur­rent test results.  Third grade stu­dents can pre­pare for these tests by down­load­ing the drill their are cur­rently work­ing on from the Math Fact Prac­tice Pages link. Fourth grade stu­dents’ test are 80 – 100 basic fact prob­lems in addi­tion, sub­trac­tion, mul­ti­pli­ca­tion, and division.

Typ­i­cally, math home­work is assigned Tues­day –Thurs­day nights. Check your child’s plan­ner for spe­cific assignments.

Grade 3:

From Mr. Romanowski: This week we worked on under­stand­ing tables and charts. We focused on using exact lan­guage to tell what each row, col­umn and cell rep­re­sents. We also prac­ticed writ­ing ques­tions based on the infor­ma­tion in the chart. We also took a look at var­i­ous story prob­lems with either extra infor­ma­tion, hid­den infor­ma­tion, or not enough infor­ma­tion. We are going to push through the last few lessons in the unit and try to take the test before we go on break next week. Con­tinue mem­o­riz­ing mul­ti­pli­ca­tion facts.

From Ms. Einspar: We are work­ing in two units this week.  Mini unit C — Motion geom­e­try pat­terns ( rec­og­niz­ing and describ­ing slides, flips, and turns), Repeat­ing pat­terns and growing/​shrinking pat­terns (num­ber and geo­met­ric pat­terns).  Test on Friday.

We are also con­tin­u­ing with Unit 3 — Com­plet­ing tables (rows, columns, and cells), work­ing on word prob­lems with extra infor­ma­tion, not enough infor­ma­tion to solve, or solv­ing two-​​step word problems.

From Mrs. Pen­ner: Please con­tact Mrs. Pen­ner if you have a spe­cific ques­tion con­cern­ing your child math studies.

Grade 4:

Mrs. King’s math stu­dents: We will begin (and com­plete) Mini Unit B: Lines, Angles, and Tri­an­gles. Unit B reviews lines, seg­ments, rays, and angles. Stu­dents use these con­cepts to explore dif­fer­ent kinds of tri­an­gles. For exam­ple, per­pen­dic­u­lar lines make right angles, and a roght tri­an­gle has one right angle.

This unit also builds on the explo­ration of quadri­lat­er­als from Unit A and the con­cepts of perime­ter and area as the stu­dents dis­cover the stan­dard method for find­ing the perime­ter of a tri­an­gle (side + side + side) and the area of a tri­an­gle (1÷2 base x height). I antic­i­pate that the Mini Unit B test will be given on Fri­day, Decem­ber 16.

From Mrs. Har­vey: We are start­ing a new unit — Unit 4 — Vari­ables and Alge­braic Expres­sions … we will be work­ing on this for the next sev­eral weeks.  we are con­tin­u­ing to work on our Math Quest prob­lem solv­ing sup­ple­men­tal unit.

From Ms. Medved: We are work­ing on order of oper­a­tion and expres­sions (Chap­ter 7 in the CA math books)

Grades 3 – 4: In Lan­guage Arts, Our class book is off to the printer. I can’t wait to get it back.

In Read­ing Both third and fourth graders are using the Houghton Mif­flin read­ing anthol­ogy as their text. The theme for third grade is cel­e­brat­ing tra­di­tions and for fourth grade, Amer­i­can sto­ries. Var­i­ous com­pre­hen­sion, gram­mar and spelling skills will be taught and reviewed fol­low­ing read­ing the stories.

For spelling/​word study, our class will be work­ing on the web­site:  SpellingC​ity​.com. I have pur­chased the pre­mium account for this site. I have given all stu­dents their user and and pass­word so they can log onto our class’ site. As of right now, I am con­tin­u­ing to ask­ing stu­dents to work way through the 1000 most often used words in the Eng­lish lan­guage. All lists have been added to the queue.

Grade 3 -In Social Stud­ies We are con­tin­u­ing with our book study of Indi­ans of the Oaks. This week we are watch­ing an infor­ma­tive movie made by the Kumeyaay that demon­strates their pro­duc­tion of pot­tery, bas­ketry, and other var­i­ous aspects of Kumeyaay cul­ture. Later in the week, we’ll read about how the main char­ac­ters in our story, Pion, Kwee-​​tahk, and Op-​​a-​​chuck, weave bas­kets and build their Kumeyaay huts.

 Grade 4 -In Social Studies/​Science: Mrs. Calder’s and our 4^th graders are going to Ms. Medved for their sci­ence instruc­tion. I will be tak­ing her class for their Social Stud­ies instruction.

We are fin­ish­ing our study of elec­tric­ity and magnets.  The focus of this unit of study is Elec­tric­ity and Mag­net­ism. The lessons cov­ered will include: 1) What is Sta­tic Elec­tric­ity? 2) What is an Elec­tric Cur­rent? 3) What is a Mag­net? and 4) What is an Elec­tro­mag­net?. Vocab­u­lary words include: charge, sta­tic elec­tric­ity, elec­tric field, elec­tric cur­rent, cir­cuit, elec­tric cell, con­duc­tor, insu­la­tor, resis­tor, series cir­cuit, par­al­lel circuit,magnet, mag­netic pole, mag­netic field, electromagnet.

The stu­dents will fin­ish tak­ing their sci­ence test on Tues­day.  All sci­ence projects are due on Tues­day, Decem­ber 13^th.  All sci­ence pack­ets are due Tues­day, Decem­ber 13^th as well.

As always, there’s so much to cover and so lit­tle time! Make it a great week. AND: WHBK (work hard; be kind)

If you have any sug­ges­tions on how I can make this blog more ben­e­fi­cial to you, please email me at kking@​powayusd.​com and share your ideas with me. Thank you.