Vandenbosch News

Remember, our Barnes and Noble Night is this Thursday (26th) from 5:30-8:00 at the B&N in Muskegon. Come support Holmes! A percent of sales goes to support literacy at Holmes Elementary. You can even shop online using code #10575538 at checkout. The code is good all weekend! Our Holmes Choir will be singing at 5:30 and 7:00 and many students will be sharing their writing. I hope you can make it!

Also, remember to keep selling chocolate for our Chicago fundraiser. Bars are $2 each, and checks can be made to Holmes Elementary.

Check out the 2 new links added on the right of this page: Lincoln Park Zoo and The Museum of Science and Industry.  We will be headed to these places on May 31st!

Chocolate, choclate , chocolate! The smell in our classroom is overwhelming!   I hope your sales are going well!  If you need another box to sell, either bring in the envelope with the $50 from the sold box, or send me an email asking for another box.

We have started a new writing unit.  Every student chose an animal from the Lincoln Park Zoo website. The Lincoln Park Zoo is one of our stops when we go to Chicago!  Over the next few weeks we will be organizing our research and developing an article similar to ones we read in our Time For Kids magazines, complete with graphs, charts, new words, etc.

In math we are learning 2 digits x 2 digit numbers.  We used the rectangle, or array, method first, then we learned what we are calling “the shortcut,” which is the old way that we all learned in school.  This week we will move to 2 digits x 3 digits!

I have been sitting with your child these past couple of weeks and listening to them read and talk about what they read.  I find this time very informative and evaluative. There are benchmarks for fluency (expression and words per minute) as well as comprehension, and you will learn a bit of what I found in the report card this week.  I am very impressed with how much everyone is learning and the depth of their thinking!  I use this information to guide my instruction ove rthe next few months.

I spent Friday working on report cards, and they will be mailed home this week.

It was so  great to see everyone’s smiling face last Tuesday! We had a productive, busy week this week!  We jumped right back into our reading lessons, our vocabulary lessons, and a new math unit. 

In math we are beginning our unit on multi-digit multiplication.  We began by looking at arrays again and used those to begin multiplying 1 digit by 2 digit numbers.  We then learned a few shortcuts, and what it is we are actually doing when multiplying larger numbers.  Next week will look at 1 digit x 3 and 4 digit numbers and then 2 digit x 2 digit numbers using arrays.  Once we learn the “shortcuts” we may need practice.  So far everyone is learning this new information beautifully!  I am impressed!

We are finishing our realistic fiction writing pieces next week by adding some illustrations.  We will then begin a non-fiction writing unit in which we will do a little research about an animal and write a piece similar to a Time For Kids magazine feature article, complete with graphs, charts, vocabualry boxes, etc.

We will fiish our unit on the geography themes of the United States this coming week in social studies and then after that begin our next science unit on the states of matter. 

We finished our book Tiger Rising this week.  We talked about motifs or symbols found in the book.  Ask your child about the suitcase, what Rob’s rash represents, or the meaning of the caged tiger.  We had some fantastic discussions.  Everyone is trying to find symbols or objects, actions, images, etc. that reoccur and have meaning to the story in the books they are reading by themselves.  We are trying to make our thoughts or responses to the text important and complex and to form theories and make inferences.  It is tough work, but I am seeing great things from everyone!  Next week I will be doing the comprehension and fluency testing to see what great gains everyone has made so far this year!

E-Reader Policy: The school is working on a policy regarding e-readers and using them in class.  For now, if your child has your permssion to bring an e-reader (Kindle, Nook Sony) to school, please know that neither the school nor I will be responsible if it gets broken, lost, or stolen.  Your child must still read “Just Right” ebooks during reading time and their choice during “dessert read.”  I suggest that they keep the device in their desk during school, and take it home each night for safety.  They may not play games on it or use the internet.  I know that these devices are a fun way to read and may be just the motivation some children need!

Don’t forget that on Friday, January 20, there is no school because teachers will be working on report cards that will be sent home the week of the 23rd.

First, I want to say thank you to everyone for the great gifts I was given before break!  You are very generous!  I hope you are enjoying your break from school as a family.  I know I am.  My mother, my daughter, and I went to Chicago for a few days, I spent Christmas with my family, and now I am back at school getting ready for everyone to return in the new year!

I also want to thank the chaperons who helped us visit the planetarium. We looked at the night sky in new ways, and even got a glimpse into the fututre!

I have a few pictures from the day before break to share:

 

Enjoy the last few days of vacation, and I can’t wait to see you in 2012!

We brought literature to life today as we tie-dyed t-shirts this morning!  In our current read-aloud book, Schooled, the main character, Cap, holds a “tie-dye-palooza” in the art room.  WE re-enacted this scene ourselves when we twisted and tied our shirts then mixed the primary colors to make many more.  I can’t wait to see how they turn out!

These shirts need to sit for 24 hours.  We will then take them home tomorrow along with washing instructions.  We would like to wear the shirts with the entire 4th grade on Friday!

 

We are learning to classify triangles by their sides, their angles, or both.  I found this page on CoolMath.com.  I noticed that scalene triangles are missing!  Hey 4th grader, do YOU remember what the definition of a scalene triangle is?

Click Here For Triangles Types

I just wanted to show you in case you missed the latest Holmes Blog entry.  We were featured playing our recorders for the second graders!

Holmes Blog

 

Last week we read Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco and talked about the plot of the story. We learned about characters, problem, events, and how particularly the setting is important to this story.  We then made Thunder Cup Cakes on Tuesday.  What fun!  The recipe went home on Tuesday, but I have added a link also.

 

Thundercake Recipe

We had a great week learning about how to talk more about characters in our reading this week. We also had a wonderful discussion about our current book, Tiger Rising, as we noticed a theme running through the story. We even realized we saw some symbolism in the story through the main character’s dream! Ask you child about the main character’s “suitcase,” and what it means. I am really impressed with their thinking! Check out this picture of our discussion time. We wrote in our reading logs first, to organize our thinking first.

Our own stories that we are writing are coming along nicely.  We made a plot mountain, and planned out each scene for our stories, thinking about character, setting, problem, events, and the sloution.  We then talked about how to write a scene, as opposed to just summarizing.  Next week we will continue to write each scene of our story.

We looked at a lot of examples of human/environment ineraction in social studies this week.  We dissected a video about Yellowstone National Park looking for evidence of human characteristics in the midst of the physical characteristics.

Don’t forget – we have a short week this week.  Enjoy your family time this Thanksgiving!

Do you enjoy a good movie? We are enjoying the movies being made in our minds as we read. We are learning how to be lost in the book’s “mind movie” so that we even jump when the character jumps, answer the imaginary door when we hear a knock in our book, and empathise with our charcters so much that we miss them when we put the book down. We are also diging into the structure of our fiction texts by looking closely at how the author uses setting, changes characters, and unfolds the plot in a predictable or unpredicatble way.

In writing we have chosen what our story is going to be about and have begun to get to know our characters as if they were real people. Before beginning our draft of our story we are looking at developing characters through their internal and external characteristics. This week we will plot out our story so that we can imagine each scene before we write.

We took the pretest in math on Friday over addition, subtraction, rounding, and place value. We will take the final tests this week and begin a mini geometry unit on angles.

In Social Studies this week we looked at the difference between absolute and relative location and different physical characteristics of the United States. We are working our way through MR. HELP, which is a way to remember the 5 themes of geography. We have looked at L – Location (where is it?) and P – Place (What is it like there?). By the end of this unit your child will be able to tell you what all the letters stand for in the acronym.

We are starting “A Season of Caring” from now until December 15. The Student Council is accepting pj’s, hats, slippers, etc. to be donated. Please click here for more information.
Season of Caring

Take a look at a vocabulary game we played this week! We had to guess what our word was by the clues our partner gave us.