BON DIA
Week 35, May 24, 2010

RAVES:
To our SUPER chaperones; Dave, Star, Maureen, that made the long trip down to the Capital Campus with us. We had a great day. We had the amazing opportunity to sit on the House floor in the rep. big leather chairs and hear from one of the representatives from Federal Way. According to our guide she had never seen that before. No one is invited on the floor, we were guessing it was a case of being in the right place at the right time. Upon entering into the Capital Building there was a student choir on all three levels singing Bach. It sounded like angels singing, very special.

REMINDERS:
7:00pm June 3rd, Junior Olympic Performances in the gym.
Friday, June 4th Junior Olympics and lunch from the different countries. Early out.

ACADEMICS:
We are wrapping up our year. I am going to give a time line of what to expect in the next few weeks of 4th grade.

Math: We will begin to review our different math units learned this year. We will have a final Math test on Wednesday, June 9th. I will hand out that review guide to the students today. We will also have a math quiz this Friday the 28th over our Solving Problem unit.
Religion: The students have turned in their Saint Reports. The students will present their Saint Reports to the class on Wednesday, May 26th. They will also write to the Saint in their own life who resembles likeness to the Saint they did their reports on. We will have a visit from Deacon Joe on Thursday, a visit from a community member about being goods stewards of the earth and gardening, today. We will also work out a day where we can walk down and see her community garden here in Ballard. When we decide on that day I will send home a slip for you to sign since we will be crossing 14th. The remaining days we will work in the garden, planting, weeding, and just plain tending.
Reading/Social Studies: This Friday, June 28th we will have a quiz over chapters 11-13. We will also continue to read through chapters 14-16 in the Social Studies book. Much of what we are now reading about we saw and experienced on our Capital Building visit. The quiz for Chapters 14-16 will be on June 3rd. The students will begin to explore a company in Washington/Seattle today. They will work on this project in pairs. They will present their company to the class on Thursday, June 10th. We will start this company project late this week, Wednesday or Thursday. I will be conducting QRI assessments to those students who read at or below a 4th grade reading level at the beginning of the year. If your student read at a middle school level at the beginning of the year I will not re-give him/her the QRI (Qualitative Reading Inquiry).
Science: We will go through the Sun, Moon, and Stars Foss kit; this will take us to the end of the year. This test will be the last week of school; I’m not sure the date yet.
LA: In our English Voyages book we will continue parts of speech with adverbs. We will also write our own versions of the book; There was an Old Lady who Swallowed a Fly. I will be driving over to the teacher learning store to pick up these books. Boxes of 10 books are sold for $30. I ask that you send in $3 dollars for your student’s book.
Bridges: We hope to finalize the bridges editing this week. I would like to invite all of the families in to see our digital story the last week of school. I will let you know on the date when we have finished the story.

Have a great week :)

Angelville News

BON DIA

Week 34, May 17, 2010

WOW! Can't believe we are in week 34!

RAVES:

*Dave, Maureen, and Monica for driving to Edmond's. We couldn't have had a better day! Great Field Trip, kids were SUPER!

*4th graders for their continual garden stewardship. We had a nice time showing the garden to the Pre-kers last Friday. The 4th graders showed them around, explained what was growing and then read stories to them in the garden on the tree stumps from Nora's yard. We love the stumps to sit on Nora, Thank You!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

*Olympia Field Trip this Friday, 21. We will leave right at 8:30am and return just before the end of the day. Students will need to wear their Green Team t-shirts and uniform shorts or pants. Hoping it will be another nice day.

ACADEMICS:

*This week we are going to finish up our Saints' reports. We will work in the lab to finish these. I will collect them on Thursday. In Math we will continue with our Problem Solving Unit. Due to the ITBS tests last week, we didn't do much math. In reading/S.S. we will read Chapters 14-16 in our SS book and answer the questions at the end of the chapters. The test for this unit will be the last week of school. I will give you plenty of notice and a review guide prior to the test date. In L.A. we will review parts of speech, and next week we will write our own There was an....................who......................, books. We also continue to finish up our Digital Story. We recorded the audio last week and will begin to plug in the digital pictures this week. There are still some shots I need the students to capture. I will put together a shot list today and please let me know if you can help your student capture these shots.

Have a great week!

Angelville News

BON DIA

Week 33, May 11, 2010

I apologize for the late Newsletter. I was without my computer yesterday.

RAVES:

*Annie Cast, what a great job each and everyone of those students did to contribute to the beauty of that musical.

*Great sunny weekend, YAY!

*4th graders for always working as a team! You all are great!

REMINDERS:

*3-4 Science club on Friday

*4th grade field trip to Edmonds Beach on Thursday, keeping my fingers crossed that it is a great day! Make sure to pack your kids a sack lunch we will enjoy our lunch at the beach.

*Good night sleeps and breakfast this week, ITBS testing

*May take the kids down the street on Friday to visit a community members garden who wants to be active in our school garden. Will send home a note if we do. She just lives a few blocks.

ACADEMICS:

*Well as you probably know we are in the throws of the ITBS testing all this week, so our curriculum is minimal. We are still working on our Bridges story and your student may be asked to capture a picture around our home. You may see one of the school's cameras coming home. I believe we will have a visit from a Bridges Member this week to help us record our story and match up the pictures.

*The students are working on researching their Saints in the lab. They were all given a requirement sheet of information to gather and the rubric that they will be assessed on. If they follow the rubric they should receive a perfect score. This project is all up to them. At this point int he year I need to see that they are self learners and are able to handle this project on their own. I am only asking for 3 paragraphs on their Saint, making sure they are able to capture all of the information in those 3 paragraphs.

*We will work ahead in our SS curriculum and the birth of Seattle in reading. We are also moving forward in our Science, Sun-Moon-Stars-and layers of the earth.

Have a Sunny Week!

Angelville News

BON DIA

Week 32, May 3, 2010

RAVES:

*Lets hear it for the Annie Cast! Wow, so impressive!

*Lets also hear it for the students 5 Paragraph Expository Writings. If you are in the building please come up to see the board outside the classroom. We are now working on our artist vase art, we will put those on display when they are finished.

REMINDERS:

*Early out tomorrow, Tuesday 4th

*Mary crowning Friday, 7th on the second floor in front of Mary. Have your students bring flowers that day.

*Friday is a non-uniform day

*ITBS testing will begin the week of May 10th

ACADEMICS:

*This week we are going to work really hard to get our Bridges Script completed and begin to work on our shot list. Monica, I was wondering if you or any other parents would mind coming in to talk to me about this project so we can stay on track to finish the digital story. In reading/SS we will continue this week to work on Unit 8 and Unit 9 - Early Settlements. We are now in the final unit of SS - Seattle!

*In LA we are going to work on creating our own Magazine. This will be a first go-around trying this so we will see how it goes. Will probably be working on this project for a few weeks. Thursday we are going to plant some things in the garden with the Kindergartners.

*In Math we are also working on our last Unit of the year, Problem Solving. I am also going to introduce negative numbers. Students will plot integers on a (x,y) coordinate plane. After completing this unit we will review all units and take a final cumulative math final at the end of the year.

Have a great week!

Angelville News

BON DIA

March 26, 2010

Week 31

RAVES:

Can we say WOW, 4th graders! What a great job, I have heard so many great things about how you all did at the Blessing. Bishop Tyson was super duper impressed.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

We are sad to say that today is Jeremy Vicencio's last day with us here at St. Al's. We sure hope he returns to graduate from St. Al's. He is off to the Philippines to be with his mother. You will be in our hearts and prayers Jeremy. God Bless you!

Annie play begins on Friday, April 30th

Jogathon, Thursday, March 29th, get your pledges.

Progress Reports will go out tomorrow.

ACADEMICS:

This week we will have our Reading/Social Studies test on Friday, March 30th over The Lost Wagon Train and chapter 8/9 in the Social Studies book.

Tomorrow we will review for our Math test over; ordered pairs (graphing them), problem solving, bar graphs, probability/statistics, mean, medium, mode, which will be on Wednesday, March 28.

In Social Studies we will continue with our Bridges script. In Science we will continue with our Earth and Space Science Unit. Now that the Garden Blessing is over we will try and get back on track with that unit.

We will wrap up our Artist Expository writings this week. Friday will be the deadline. There are still some students who are falling behind. You may see an e-mail from me if your student is one of those. The plan is to use the computer lab in the afternoons to type our writings.

If you have any questions please e-mail me at mizschmutz@gmail.com

Check out those 4th Graders

St. Alphonsus Garden Blessing, WOW! What a great way to start the Day! The School is so proud.

Angelville News

BON DIA

Week 30

April 20, 2010

RAVES:

*The 4th graders for all of their hard work in the garden - Go 4th GRADE :)

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

*Blessing of the garden, April 23rd at 9:30am in the garden, I hope you are all able to attend. 4th grade will be putting on this prayer service. Bishop Tyson will also be in attendance.

ACADEMICS:

*We have many things going on this week. I want to begin with the preparation of the garden and prayer service. The prayer service will have an Earth Day theme since the 40th anniversary of Earth Day is April 22nd. April is also National Gardening month and Poetry Month. Both of these will contribute to our prayer service.

*Another exciting thing going on is the beginning script of our Digital Story. We are on a scheduled time line to have the digital story completed by the end of May. As soon as the story is complete we will welcome all of you in to view it with us. We will have our own mini file festival toward the end of the year to debut our Story. We are consulting with Bridges 2 Understanding on this project. Our story should then be displayed on their website. If you are interested and would like to go on the http://www.bridges2understanding.org/ you can view some of the digital stories other schools in the world have completed. This is a big deal and we would be one of just a few schools from the US. I am going to need some parent volunteers to help students capture digital pictures in and around our school community. If you are interested please contact me via my e-mail, mizschmutz@gmail.com. I'm hoping to have a shot list soon.

*In reading/SS we continue to learn about the Oregon Trail. We will work on Chapters 8 and 9 of the SS text book. I am now scheduling for the Oregon Trail/Missionaries Test to take place Friday, April 30th. I will not make up a review guide for this test. Students will use their Lost Wagon Train journal and notes and work from Chapters 8/9 to review for this test. We will also review in class next week.

*In math we continue to review line graphs, probability, ordered pairs, statistics, mean, median, mode. We will have a test on the Algebra Unit Wednesday, April 28th.

*Everyone is working on their Expository Writing on their chosen Artist. My MSL students are getting help from Mrs. Corr in MSL. I hope to have these near completion by the end of the week. We will then work on the art projects to go along with the expositors. I will then display them on the outside of the classroom. I will let you know when they are displayed so you can come up and view them.

Hoping to see you all on Friday. If you have any questions about this week please contact me via e-mail.