Welcome to the 2010-2011 Schoolyear!

We are having a great time getting to know each other and READING! I can't believe it's been a week of school. We've done a few assessments here and there, but we've started reading, writing, math, and science! I have really enjoyed laughing (and crying...let them tell you) with your kids. I hope they are having fun. I've even had one fall asleep reading, so we're building up our stamina right now! Hope you guys have a great weekend in this wonderful weather.

Those Shoes

This is the book we read today with a special message. I must say, it's one of my favorites lately. I hope you guys liked it.

We're Back!!!

Well guys, we have begun a new school year today, so if you are from my 08-09 group, I hope you had a great day in middle school. This new group I have is great and we had a great day as well. I think it was fun. I'm sure you all told your parents about having to unload ALL the school supplies. If you think about it, keeping up with your own is trouble enough, but multiply that by 25 and it's even harder!!

I think the kids' day went even better since they had PE. That was a nice plus. Remember to keep sending all your forms that are completed. Also, if you want to order a Puppy Pound shirt, you must send the money in with the form. I'll be posting any updates this week as they come. Thanks for a great day!!

It's Not Over!!

Yes, it's been awhile since the last post, but we've had testing and are finally getting back to normal. We're in the middle of writing our own class newspaper. We've finished reading The Black Stallion and went to see an awesome Arabian Horse show at Harper Stadium last Monday. We've got our last spirit say tomorrow, Field Day on Friday, trip to Northridge Middle School, and lots of other things going on including...Fourth Grade Camp!! We leave next Wednesday. The last day of school is on June 1st and it will be here before you know it!

Hooray for February!

There's lots going on this month! Today we just took the NAEP test and the kids did great. We have Ms. Grace in our class for our literacy block for this month. We are beginning personal essay, which is the best, since we can give our opinion of the idea and let our voices be heard!

We have Jump Rope for Heart with Coach Blake. The Book Fair will be coming soon too! There's lots of reading going on in our class. It's wonderful!

Update

Hey, we're on our last week of Realistic Fiction and getting ready to start publishing. I think we're ready to get started on another genre. We have even more books to add to our class library! We will be having Ms. Grace, our 3rd and 4th grade curriculum coach joining us for the month of February. She will be teaching with me for Reader's and Writer's Workshop.

We will be having our Valentine's Day party on Friday, Feb. 12. I can not send home a class list, so your kids will have to do their very best to remember their classmates, probably by where they sit in class.

My Teacherspace

Yes, it's like MySpace, but for teachers! You can access our class by either going to vbsd.us and looking me up at teacherspace along the right margin or you can click on this link: http://teacher.vbsd.us/klbrown

News

We are beginning the third nine weeks! I can't believe it's already here. We are currently studying realistic fiction in reading and writing workshop. We're reading a great book called Schooled by Gordon Korman, author of Swindle. We're really discussing the main character named Capricorn Anderson, a hippie-child who has lived in a commune with his grandmother and is made to live in the outside world. The kids can tell you all about the story.

We're also wriiting realistic fiction, where they have created their own character, based on personal experiences, and they are using that character in a longer story than the narratives before. We're just about to start mapping out the draft.

We're in the middle of Unit 5 in Math. I sent home on blue paper, the activities and benchmarks taught in this unit. It's a little different than the way we were taught in addition, but definitely a new way at looking at it.

Since Martin Luther King Jr. Day was just observed, we have timed our civil rights unit just perfectly. We've also studied other individuals, such as Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez.

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone's having a great break! I know I am. Read a great book and have visited with family and friends. See you soon!

Merry Christmas!

We had quite the week before we left. Hopefully, you all are having a great week off. I wanted to let you all know how proud I am of your work on your "All About" books. I have really learned what you're are experts at. I can't wait to finish all of the published books. Your family should be very proud.

Thanks for the wonderful Christmas presents. That was very thoughtful of you! I hope you enjoy playing with the games at inside recess. I also think we had a great time at the party. We're pretty low-key in the fourth grade. I hope you liked the nachos. I wanted to post a few new pics from our celebration on Friday. I won't post any pics of you kids, but I will post what you wrote, as you reflected on this experience. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Giving Thanks

I hope that all of you spend time with your family and friends, thanking each other for all you have. We have the priviledge to live in this country. Right now, there's no other place I'd want to be. We have the gifts of this land and ideal that you can be anything you desire to be. It takes hard work and determination. Let's give thanks for being able to live in a land where we can all go to school and gain as much knowledge as we can. I'm thankful for all of you and your families who support you.

Cleanest Room?

Our class won the "Cleanest Room Award" for last week and it's our responsibility to recycle something in particular for the week. We've chosen to recycle aluminum of any kind. Please send your soda cans and your food cans, rinsed out and dry anytime this week. We are so proud that VB is the ONLY school district in the state of Arkansas to have their own recycling program. We get a weekly update of how many tons of paper we recycle as a district. Way to go guys!!

Yeah, It's Been Awhile

Why does this seem to be the common title for my posts? I guess I seem to wait and collect a few things to share and then get it all off my chest. Maybe that's not healthy. Well, we have really settled into our routine. I am SO proud of the way the kids are doing in Reader's Workshop! They know to get started on their independent reading as soon as our minilesson is over. They go and get out their reading logs and then find a comfy spot to read. I have been able to begin my third rotation of guided reading these past few weeks. Since conferences, we spoke that I would be beginning guided reading. Now that I have assessed every study on the Benchmark, we have begun small groups. They are going great. We have finished up our study on characters in Reading for October and now going on to Nonfiction reading.

We have also been wrapping up our Personal Narratives in Writing this month. Monday and Tuesday are going to be publishing days and we will celebrate on Wednesday. We talked at conferences about how we were going to "Raise the Quality" of our narratives that were posted outside in the hallway. I must say that every student has exceeded my expectations. They are not equally the same, but every student has made a great gain because I can ask a question about a story we read, or a student's story such as "What's the story about? What's the story really about?" and every student can come up with the real message and meaning of the story. It is so exciting to see. I am so proud of their improvement.

We finished up our study of government in Social Studies. We did lots of discussion on civic duties, the make up of our national, state, and local governments, and went on to follow the election. I loved it! I know these kids are very much aware of what our government does for us and our responsibilty as citizens of this country. You could tell that they wished they were old enough to vote. I guarantee that each student will be registered to vote when their time comes. We did have a schoolwide mock election and then our class had a mock election on Tuesday. The results were surprising, but didn't follow the real outcome: Obama 4-McCain 21.

We wrapped up our Unit 3 on Multiplication and Division in Math. They are still becoming more aware of the importance in knowing their multiplication facts. We start Unit 4 Measurement on Monday. We are also starting our Animal study in Science and will be doing research in writing with animals. They are very excited about writing informational texts.

We have OG &E coming to talk with them on Thursday morning. Citizen's Bank will be giving them an ice cream party for the savings program they participated in. We will also tour the bank on Nov. 20.

Have a great week! Email if you need anything! Oh yeah, we finished The Indian in the Cupboard Thursday and I have started our new read aloud Swindle by Gordan Korman. I know you've been hearing about it.

Update!

Well, we've gone through a lot of new things these past two weeks. I'm so proud to say that our class published their first narrative story and they were great. They're hanging in our hallway! I've been in and out of the building so much lately. It is very hard to be away, believe it or not. It's more trouble to find and plan things for a sub to do. I'd rather be at work with the kids. I can modify and adjust better that way. That's part of being a teacher. I was away at Literacy Lab, which is a class the fourth grade teachers have been enrolled in for two years now. It's put on by a very educated man named Ken Stamatis, who is the Reading Instructor for Harding University. He is the one who has put together the best degree program for teachers of reading there is.

Another reason I've been out is because of being fitted for my new splint which I will wear for the rest of the year. I have TMJ, which deals with my jaws, and have had this since I was a teenager. It's pretty painful and has given me lots of headaches, tension in my face, neck, and shoulders. I even hurt to the point of having a CT scan over a year ago. Needless to say, I'm hopeful that this will subside the pain and I can get on with my life. So, that explains why your kids have probably been saying, "Mrs. Brown wasn't there today." Or, you probably didin't know!

We've gone on into Science and are almost finishing up Weather. We'll be doing some hands on stuff next week. We've also gone to Unit 3 in Math. I have sent home two green sheets in their Tuesday folder that explains a little of the activities we'll be working with for the multiplication in this unit.

I'm assessing every child on a new test called the "Benchmark". I know that sounds like the ACTAAP test we take, but it's just a new reading assessment. It will show your child's reaing level in letters, not numbers, but I will corellate the two on the report cards.

Clayton Scott is here this week. He's a poet and former classroom teacher. He travels all over the state from the day we start school to the day we finish. He is visiting every fourth grade class in Van Buren. We'll have a school Poetry Slam on Friday at about 1:00-2:15. It's going to be awesome!

Conferences will be coming up soon in October. I look forward to talking with you face to face and meeting you. I have really gotten to know your children. They are great. Some like to pull a few tricks with the subs, but they're really a great class. Gotta love 'em!

It's Been Awhile

Well, I had been checking the site meter and we don't get many visits to our blog unfortunately. This is a great way for me to communicate to you what we are doing in class. This week has been really busy! We had the Book Fair! Lots of students have been buying AND reading books. I have purchased some and also have had some donated to our class by our peers and the book fairy. I also have titles from the book fair that are aleady in my library for the kids to check out. We also had Grandparent's Day Wednesday and Thursday. It was quite busy here and in the parking lot too!

We are currently working on establishing and maintaining the Reading Workshop procedures for Aug./Sep. and I am conferencing with your children on what they're reading, reading orally to me, and taking them to books in our class library that they might enjoy. We have discussed the importance of reading that 20 minutes per night. Ask them what they thought about it. We had a good turnout on the purchasing of books from the book order. I'll probably send one home for October, just because there's always good fall books in them. Lots of students are giving book talks to their peers, which is like a mini-commercial for a book, or book reccommendation. I am very pleased with the progress we've made so far.

In writing, we have a MAJOR due date for our published works: September 30th! Last week, the students went through the writing process of outlining and drafting of a small moment or narrative story from their life. I have them home with me as I have been enjoying reading them this week. We chose a new topic on Monday and have gone through the process again, only this time we'll revise and edit this piece for publication on September 30th. It's a little challenging to get students to realize that they can live a writer's life just by observing things around them. They think that if they've never been anywhere special or won something, then they have nothing to write about. I always give my little simple pleasures of writing about my son. They think I'm silly, I'm sure.

In Math, we're on to the study of Data, and have learned about line plots and graphs, and how to analyze those graphs. They will be creating their own survey question next week to ask other classes and continuing the data dissaggregation process.

We are wrapping up our study of the American Revolution in Social Studies and beginning our study of weather in Science Monday. There will be no performance grade on the progress report for Science.

I hope everyone has a relaxing weekend with the nice weather! GO HOGS, BEAT BAMA!

Check Out Scholastic Site

If you would like to read the standards that will be assessed during the first nine weeks on the report card for Math, please go to our Class Scholastic Site. It's under the announcements section. I also added some new things to the Homework section.

Holy Enchilada!

A Recipe for Hank's Zingy (But Not Too Zingy) One-of-a-Kind Killer Enchiladas

2 cups of tomato sauce
1 tablespoon chili powder (for zing)
1/4 teaspoon oregano
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon cumin
1/4 teaspoon salt
3 cups shredded cheddar cheese, or blend of Mexican cheeses
1/3 cup chopped onion
16 small corn tortillas

Instructions:
In a saucepan, combine the tomato sauce, chili powder, oregano, garlic powder, cumin, and salt. Go get an adult to help you turn on the stove to medium heat. (remember to get an adult to help you. Take it from me: You don't want to burn yourself, inside your mouth or out. That is no fun.)

Cook the sauce until it comes to a boil, then turn the heat down low and let it cook uncovered for 15 minutes. Stir it every once in a while. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, mix 2 1/2 cups of cheese with the onions.

Warm the tortillas in the microwave, then dip them into the tomato sauce mixture. Lay them in a greased 9 x 13 inch casserole dish. Fill each tortilla with the cheese-and-onion stuff. Roll it up, Keep filling and rolling until the dish is full.

Sprinkle the leftover tomato sauce and cheese on top. Go get a grown-up to turn the oven on to 350 degrees. Let it warm up for a few minutes. Put the whole pan in the oven. Bake it for about 25 minutes or until the cheese is melted and bubbly.

PTA Memberships

If you haven't joined Rena PTA this year, please do! It is a wonderful thing to do for our school. We are looking forward to reaching 100% schoolwide. Even if you are unable to volunteer or attend meetings, it's still great to join. Our PTA is so supportive to our kids and the teachers. If we need something, they always do their best to see that we get what we need. You can join many members of your family! If you need extra forms, let me know!

Daily Pages

Oh, one more thing! I have to brag on the class today with their Daily Pages. That is an activity we do in their writer's notebook. They've decorated them so far, and the daily pages is something that helps build their writing stamina. They don't have to write about important things. It can be about the daily routines they experience on the bus, in the car, at home, or anywhere. They must write and write, trying to reach a goal on the page they set for themselves. It really helps in making them stronger, with being able to write for longer periods of time. Today, we did 5 minutes without stopping, first. Then, I added 5 more minutes. Some kids reached their goal of one full page! That's amazing for the first time, so I'm very proud! Try it at home!

Tuesday Folders

Well, you were supposed to see the Tuesday Folder today but by the time I began filing the stack of papers, only about 25% of the class had written their numbers on their papers, so it took me twice as long to file them in their mail slots. One thing lead to another, with lessons and activities, so...you will see them Wednesday. Their conduct is in the folder from the previous week and you also should've gotten their scores from last year's ACTAAP if they were here at Rena. Sorry about the folders. Just a little bit hectic today, but no worries.