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Parent Newsletter January 4, 2007 Dear Parents, Happy New Year!!!
I hope that everyone had a relaxing winter vacation! It was good to return and
see all those smiling faces of such enthusiastic fourth grade students. January will kick off an extremely important time of the year for our students. During the next two months we will be working to "fine tune" our critical reading, writing and math skills in preparation for the Colorado State Assessment Program (CSAP) testing in March. You will probably notice more work coming home in a test-taking format. Research shows us if we familiarize our students with test-taking skills, they will be better able to perform satisfactorily. In
reading we have started using nonfiction texts that relate to our social
studies unit on world geography.
In a few weeks, we will begin reading both fiction and nonfiction
books that connect to the Colorado plants and animals unit that we have been
working on. We continue to work
on fluency, critical reading comprehension skills and connected writing
activities (descriptive paragraphs, summaries, vocabulary and inference
activities). While reading at
home be sure to monitor your child with their independent reading goals and
work on the biography project for January. In December we finished writing our
personal narratives. In another
week we will complete a mid-year writing sample and then move on to research reports on a Colorado
animal. Once again, it is important for you to remember that your fourth
grader should be using complete detailed sentences that make sense, correct
spelling, and appropriate capitals and punctuation. Make sure to review all writing that comes home with your
student. We know the students do a lot of reading at home, and it's just as
important to practice writing as well.
We have also been working on cursive to help the students improve
their handwriting. We continue to work on problem solving, and multiplication and division skills in math class. Please do so at home. It is important that they have rapid recall of the answers to help them with the more complicated computations. We also will be doing a great amount of writing in math to have the students explain how they complete problems. Remember to check out the Arapahoe Ridge Website. You can find a link that has Everyday Mathematics Games, as well as other math activities. They are under the Student Links section on the website. Dates to remember in
January: Monday, January 15th No School -- Martin Luther King Holiday As always, if you
have any questions or concerns, please write a note in our Wednesday Folders
or give me a call at school. Sincerely, Kaylene Jenkins |
