The Farm Field Trip

The field trip to the Corn Maze was definitely the highlight of our week!  We started with some rain, but it quickly tapered off. Aside from some soggy and muddy routes through the maze, it turned out to be a great day. The kids thoroughly enjoyed navigating their way through the corridors of Washington State Freeways and stopping along checkpoints to learn about Washington History!  Thank you again to everyone who chaperoned! If your child would like to go again, they can get in free if they wear the orange sticker that is coming home in their Friday Folder.

Math – Unit 2, Using Numbers and Organizing Data, started with students taking a virtual field trip to Washington D.C..  Next week students will practice reading and writing numbers up to one billion as well as review number place value.  On Monday students took the Unit 1 assessment.  Their graded tests will be coming home soon.

Reading – We continue our journey through the decades learning about Washington’s History in our novel, Horse’s Tale.  This week we read about the decades of the 1900s, 1910s, and 1920s, following the horse from Ritsville to Yakima, to Roslyn. Ask your child what Henry’s phobia was, and why he had to get over his fear.

The class is still engrossed in our read aloud, Maniac Magee. Ask your child what’s been happening lately. What unfair things have happened to Maniac recently? Why did he get in a huge fight with Angela? Have them tell you about Cobble’s Knot.

Writing – This week we’ve been working on choosing a favorite personal narrative piece. We’ve spent time studying great leads and endings in books at school and at home. Students have practiced writing different types of leads and endings for their favorite piece. They also have practiced writing a discovery draft—re-writing their favorite story quick and long in order to bring out more details. Ask your student about which story they selected. Ask them to explain why it’s a seed story and not a watermelon story.

Social Studies – Students worked on team tasks and individual tasks this week in our studies of Regions of Washington. Meanwhile, I met with expert groups. Every student will be an expert on one of the four remaining regions: Coastal Region, Cascade Mountain Region, Columbia Plateau, and Okanogan Highlands (we studied our region: Western Lowlands as a class). In expert groups students read, sketched, labeled, highlighted, and mind mapped. They’ll have a chance to teach the rest of the class about their region, and then we’ll play the process grid game. Ask your student what region they are an expert on. See if they can tell you a major city, a landform, a product produced there, what the climate is like and an interesting fact.

School News

4th Grade Music Concert
Mark your calendars--Thursday, March 17th at 7:00 p.m.

Grizzly Tracks Walk-a-Thon & Fall Festival is BACK! ~ Sept 29, from 5pm-8pm

• Grand Ridge PTSA will hold its annual Walk-a-Thon to benefit Teacher Grants.  100% proceeds will be used this school year for Grants.
• Last year the Walk-A-Thon raised $19,500.  This year the goal is $20,000! 
• The Walk-a-thon Festival will have great music, lots of fun carnival activities and food for purchase!  (vendors accept cash only)
• Grand Ridge PTSA Walk-A-Thon is a whole family event.  Stollers welcome.  Chaperones Required.
• Pledge Forms are available on the Grand Ridge PTSA website,  http://www.grandridgeptsa.org/, and PTSA Bulletin Board

New this year...

• The route will be in the school parking lot, with a zippy new running lane! 
• A Silent Auction, with themed baskets put together by each classroom
• $1 Raffle to win "Pizza and a Puzzle" lunch for 2 with Principal Otley

Maps

Tonight, please discuss with a family member the purpose of maps. Write about the ways your family relies on maps on a regular basis.

Please review and follow the blogging rules once again. Also, be sure to select Name/URL and enter your first name only when making your post.

Rain Shadow Effect Simulation

This is what the ground looked like last week after our rain shadow effect simulation, complete with cloud-like sponges and a Pacific Ocean-like tub of water. Be sure to ask your student to explain this picture to you. Also, check out a few more photos of us conducting the simulation.

Learning Updates

Math:  This week, students constructed circles with compasses and reviewed properties of polygons. Ask your student the difference between concentric and non-concentric circles or the attributes of a regular polygon. Monday, students will take the Unit 1 assessment.  Tuesday we will begin Unit 2: Using Numbers and Organizing Data. Unit 2’s three main areas of focus are:
Examine different uses and equivalent names of numbers and review the base-ten place-value system
Review procedures for addition and subtraction of multi-digit whole numbers.
Reintroduce and extend ideas about data collection, organization, display, and analysis. 
The family letter for Unit 2 will come home with your student on Monday. After that, we’ll go paperless.

Parents received student passwords at Curriculum Night.  Please take the time to make sure that your student can access the online games from home. http://www.everydaymathonline.com     If you have any problems please let me know.  If you were unable to attend Curriculum Night your student should have brought everything home on Thursday.

Also, if you would like to get in on the fun and explore some of the EDM online games, please do not use your student’s password as I will be monitoring their use and progress online.  Instead, use the following login and password:  jasmineh211 and the 662. 

READING:  This week students worked on “Read to Someone”.  Ask your student about the guidelines (I Chart) for this activity and the important element of checking for comprehension. 

Students are reading A Horse’s Tale.  This book, by Nancy Luenn, covers the adventures of  N’uks-Cha-Ska-Ha, a wooden toy horse, as he travels through 100 years in Washington state history.  Each historical event affects the lives of children and the stories are linked as the horse passes from child to child. Ask your student about who carved N’uks-Cha-Ska-Ha and about William’s story. 

Our first read aloud is Maniac Magee, by Jerry Spinelli.  Be sure to ask your child about what’s been happening lately in the book. 

WRITTEN LANGUAGE:  We’ve learned four different strategies for generating topics in personal narratives—think of a person, a place, or an object. Think of memories you associate with them, and then make a list. A fourth is to think of a watermelon topic (a very large topic, ie my soccer game) and think of the little seed stories (small moments/episodes ~3-20 minutes long) inside, and write those down. We’ve also talked about qualities of great personal narratives. See if your child can name some of the four we discussed. The students have been building their stamina to write more in their notebooks. On Friday we talked about the difference between summarizing and telling the story in a step-by-step fashion that includes all the details from the movie inside our heads. Ask them about Mr. Herzberg’s story about his brother sleepwalking, and the two versions I wrote. Which was better, and why? 

SOCIAL STUDIES: We continue our study of Washington’s Regions.  While we have just begun examining each region’s unique features, students should be able to share with you small details about these five regions.  Ask your student which region of Washington William’s story, from Horse’s Tale, was set in, the region that has ghost towns and cattle ranches, the region we live in, the mountain region that divides Washington into two different weather regions, or the region surrounded by water on three sides.   

Class News

CLASSROOM CAMPGROUND
In a couple of weeks we begin our first classroom simulation – “Classroom Campground”.  This is a standards-based program addressing health, science, Language Arts, technology, and math standards.  It will be the central piece of our Forests and Ecosystems Thematic Unit. Students work individually and in groups on writing, drawing, planning menus, as well as learning about food chains and safety.  “Classroom Campground” increases student awareness of their environment and stresses our responsibility to preserve it.  We will be setting up camp in a couple of weeks and I am looking for a small tent (domed preferred) that I can set up in my classroom and other campsite items. If you have one that I might borrow please let me know.  FYI- students will be allowed to use the tent.

I am also looking for any “nature-ish” decorations for the classroom during the simulation. If you have any pine garland, small artificial Christmas trees, forest animal stuffed animals, cabin décor, or any other forest related items that might make the classroom feel more like a campground, I would love to borrow them. The simulation is scheduled to start Wednesday, 9/30. Thank you so much in advance!

CORN MAZE:  The field trip to the Corn Maze is fast approaching (next Friday, 9/24). Please make sure to send your child to school with a sack lunch (with their name and my name on it) on Friday and encourage them to wear sturdy walking shoes. Parent chaperones need to arrive at school no later than 9:15.

School News

Last call for donations for our class Gift Basket for the Silent Auction! If you haven’t sent in your donation, please send it in on Monday, September 20. Let’s make our class basket earn the most money for our school! Our class’ theme is gardening.

VISION AND HEARING SCREENING
Thursday, October 28
Grand Ridge’s vision & hearing screening will be Thursday, October 28.  If at all possible, please have your child here on screening day to minimize the number of re-checks later. If you would like your child to be excluded from the screening, please send a note to your child’s teacher. If your child wears glasses, please be sure he or she brings them to school the day of the screening. Thank you for your cooperation. Any questions, please feel free to contact the school nurse, Leslie Oakes, at 425-837-7930 or email her.

Washington, Our Home

The 5 Regions of Washington

We have been studying the regions of Washington state. Tonight I'd like you to respond on this blog to the following questions. There are two sets of questions. One set is for those families who moved to Washington from another state or country. The second set is for those families who have always lived in Washington state.

Remember to follow blogging rules each time you blog.

Set one:

Where else in the country or world has your family lived?
Why did your family decide to move to Washington?

Set two:

Have you always lived in this region (area) of Washington? 

If not, where else in Washington have you lived?
Why did you move to this area or why have you chosen to stay in the area?