Mrs. Spata’s Fourth Grade Blog

A window into our classroom!

Native American Day

As a culminating activity for our Native American Unit we will be having a Native American Day. 

The kids will be rotating from room to room creating different crafts.  At the end of the day we will be having a pow-wow. 

 For these crafts we ask for the following supplies: a Pringles container, which is used to create a rainstick and a coffee can (tin, not plastic with handle) to create a drum.  Please have these supplies labeled and to school no later than November 16th. 

**We will need 4 parents to help with the crafts.  It will be on Tuesday, November 20th from 9:15-12:15.  Please contact me either on this blog, by email, or write me a note by Thursday if you would like to volunteer. If I have more than 4 volunteers, I will place your names in a hat to choose.

Thank you for your support!

:O) Serena Spata

 

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Red Ribbon Week 2012

Healthy Minds/ Healthy Bodies

October 22-26

 

Monday: “I am red-dy to have a Healthy Mind and Body ‘’

Wear red today

Tuesday: “Healthy Mind / Healthy Body- No Sweat

Wear sweats today

Wednesday: “Healthy Mind/Healthy Body- No Mis-match

Wear mismatch socks today

Thursday: “Hats off to a Healthy Mind/ Healthy Body”

Wear a favorite/crazy hat today

Friday: “Team up for a Healthy Mind/ Healthy Body”

Wear a team jersey today

 

All students who participate will have their names entered into a drawing on Friday. One winner will be chosen from each grade.

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Educate New York Now Rally

It’s time to

about the damage being done to public education and to urge Albany to change its policies.

Are you fed up with cuts to education funding?

Overcrowded classrooms?  Loss of teachers? 

Over testing of students?  The tax cap?

What: 

Rally to support and advocate for our schools

and to join together to solve our educational crisis.

 

Who: 

Parents, students, teachers, administrators, and school board members. 

 

When:  

Thursday, October 25th, 4:30 – 5:30 p.m.

 

Where: 

Nesaquake Middle School Auditorium

479 Edgewood Ave., St. James, NY

Bring your friends and family. 

Together we can change Albany!

Educate NY Now is a statewide campaign that unites parents, educators, school leaders and community members who are committed to making sure that every child has a fair opportunity to make his or her dreams come true.  Rallies are being held around Long Island and New York State to Educate NY Now about what is really happening to public education.

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Photo Gallery

Be sure to check out some new pictures that I posted on our Photo Gallery page of a science experiment that we conducted!!!

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Here is a great Algonquin Native American Folktale that we read in class

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Xtra Math

 

I introduced a new website to my class today. I am very excited to begin working with it!!

It is called Xtra Math. It is a completely personalized tool that will help your child to build his/her automaticity with their math facts. It covers addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division in this order.

The goal is to be able to answer all single-digit operations by memory without any need for calculations (or counting on fingers).

Your child came home today with a flyer containing their personal password. They were told to have you log on with them the first time!!! If you give your personal email address the site will email you updates to let you know how your child is progressing.

We will use this in the class every day, and I hope that you have your child spend some time working on it at home as well.

:O) Mrs. Spata

click here to go directly to the site –

XtraMath

 

 

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Study Guides

I am so happy to hear of how many parents are using the email notifications to see my blog postings!! Thank you so much for your support!!

 

I wanted to just remind you that when I update a page (for example the study guides page), you do not get a notification for that.

The study guides for our current Math, Science, and Social Studies units are up for your use in helping your children prepare for the up-coming assessments. I also hope that they will help you to have conversations using the vocabulary from the units with your children. Having them teach you what they are learning in class is an excellent and fun way to help them review the material.

I will be sending home paper copies of these guides today. However, I often post them much earlier than I give out the paper versions.

Have a super day!! :O)

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Class Photo Day

 

We will have our class picture taken on Tuesday, October 16th in the morning.

Remember to dress to impress! 🙂

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Mental Math Strategies

Tonight’s math homework is using two tricky mental math strategies called Break Apart and Compensation!

 We are exploring and learning about them in class this week. I want my students to practice using them even though there are other ways to solve the problems. Please log on to Pearson to watch the videos, look at your child’s notes from today, and/or click the two links on the bottom to see my PDF notes with some examples.

compensation

break apart

 

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