October Highlights
Hooray! We made it through the first month of school. Now, with the weather turning a little cooler and our routine pretty much in place, we should be able to get a lot accomplished. At the end of September, the fourth graders studied Robert Frost's poem "After Apple Picking" and had an apple tasting survey. We also got together with our buddies in KB and did an activity after viewing a Johnny Appleseed video. Our service project was to make cards for the Nashua Police to thank them for their keeping our community safe. May God bless them.
Now for our plans for October.
In religion we are talking about sin, using our conscience to make right decisions, and discussing parables that deal with forgiveness and God's love. We will be going through the Sacrament of Penance, and we will memorize the Act of Contrition. Hopefully, we'll review the Beatitudes and strive to truly live as Jesus' disciples.
Math so far has been a lot of review of addition and subtraction. We will still practice, practice, practice. However, we will also work with Roman numerals and begin a review of the multiplication tables and discuss the properties of addition and multiplcation. Our study should be reinforced by Brainpop and different games or worksheets from the Internet.
Our unit on sentences in English is coming to an end. We will have a major test on this on October 7. We should still be practicing writng more detailed sentences with correct punctuation. Then we will delve into all types of nouns --common, proper, singular, plural and possessives.
Now that we've learned map skills and discussed landforms, weather, and climate in relation to the world and the United States, we will learn a little about our resources, explorers (especially Columbus) and government. We'll discuss the three branches of our government (legislative, executive, and judicial) and again use the Brainpop videos to introduce and review these branches.
Our spelling lessons are on www.spellingcity.com, and many children are reviewing for our weekly tests by going on line. Phonics also covers the rules that guide how we spell. We hope that by breaking words into syllables, our overall spelling will improve.
I continue to use our reading series, Scholastic News magazine, SRA stories, and small passages to assess reading comprehension. One favorite is "War with Grandpa" which gives a great lesson on why getting revenge only causes hurt and why communication is important. Furthermore, we get amused by watching selected stories on Tumblebooks. Hopefully, our KB buddies (Mrs. Brown's Kindergarten) will join us on a few Friday afternoons for story time.
As October comes to an end, we will have a Halloween party and craft. We'll most likely draw a "spooky" picture and write a Halloween story to decorate our bulletin board. So, here's to a busy month.