Q1 Week 5

"Fire is the test of gold; adversity, of strong men." Martha Graham

Dear Parents,

Week five of our school year is upon us and with it deficiency notices. For those who are not aware, a deficiency notice is a communication to you that your student has a deficient grade in a one of the 4 subjects they are graded on in 4th grade. Our struggles with putting names on our homework have led to a few more deficiency notices than is normal, so there may be some surprising notices coming home.

 This is a time that can be stressful for both you and your scholars, but I urge you and your students not become discouraged if you receive one. Deficient grades are easily solvable this early in the quarter. For most students it will be as simple a matter as making sure they have their name on all of their assignments.

The 4th grade is the best time for students to learn to struggle through adversity. A deficiency notice is often the lesson they need to get them to take are part of their education more seriously. I urge you to treat deficiency notices, and grades in general, as lessons to learn from rather than failures to be punished for.


This Week

History: We are moving into the Middle Ages proper this week and will be learning about the life of peasants after the fall of Rome.  Students will learn the role prayer and work had in the lives of peasants and how the vulnerability of the average person in the chaos of the Medieval age lead to the rise of Feudalism. We will have a quiz on Friday on pgs. 10 and 11 of their history notebook which SHOULD come home with them Thursday night.

Writing: In writing we will be introducing the importance of a sentence and why they can be so difficult to write. We will learn what a sentence is and how to identify a well structured sentence vs. a poorly structured sentence. We will have a quiz on nouns and pronouns next Monday (9/12/2016)

Literature: This week we will ACTUALLY seminar on Prince Caspian! Last week the chaos of MAP testing delayed our seminar. We have decided that the only question that will be discussed is "What trait is most important to have to be a good king?" Ask the question to your students and see how they respond!

The next book we will be reading is King Arthur, which will be assigned from the class.

Spalding: We will begin adding pages to our Spalding book this week. Next week you should see Spalding spelling words coming home.


Best,

Mr. Ohbayashi
4th Grade History/ELA Lead Teacher