We are preparing for our first ever partially student-led spring conferences. Please fill out the letter that went home in this week's Thursday folders to indicate not only how you want to be contacted but who you would like to conference with knowing that we are asking you only conference with one teacher. Students are creating portfolios to demonstrate their work they are most proud of and work they found challenging. With that said, some of their assessments may not make it home since they may choose to put it in their portfolio but we will send those home after conferences.
Pennies for Patients is going on for the next three weeks. We are collecting money (not just pennies) to donate to help those with Leukemia. Small collection boxes went home in last week's Thursday folders and money can be brought in at any point. Each week we are trying to win a new prize by being the homeroom with the most money donated. Please reach out to friends, neighbors and families to help us raise money. Ms. Welte's homeroom students will switch back to science starting next Friday. We will finish our unit on waves and move on to our last unit - geology.
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Can you believe it's almost Winter Break now! WOW!
Students have worked hard to complete i-ready tests but please remember some teachers are planning on ending next week with assessments so if you already know your child will be absent on any day next week, please email the appropriate teachers. Feel free to email me if you aren't sure who they have for math or ELA. We switched for science and social studies now so Ms. Welte's class will have social studies while Mrs. Gravley's class has science. Please check on grades as we will be finishing the semester next week and reports will be sent home when we return from holiday break. Our December birthday celebration will be next Tuesday from 3:05-3:30. You are more than welcome to come and without your donation of treats we wouldn't have celebrations so thank you in advance. The Winter Concert is next Tuesday night. A note with more details went home today in Thursday folders. Please contact myself or Mrs. Davis with any questions or concerns. With the i-ready data and the end of semester grades, teachers may shift students into ELA or math classes that may be more appropriate for the student. If this is true about your child, teachers will contact you. Hey there!
Can you believe it's already December?! We've got a lot going on and I'm sure you do too so I'll keep it limited to important bullet points. Feel free to email me with any questions or comments regarding this information. I-Ready testing: Next week we will have all of fourth grade test again on i-Ready. Math is on Monday, December 5th from 9:40-11:00 and ELA will be on Thursday, December 8th from 12:45-3:05. If i-Ready testing is not finished during the allotted time for the majority of the class, the teacher may decide another day to finish the test. Denver Art Museum Field Trip: We are headed to the Denver Art Museum on Wednesday, December 14th and would love to have you come chaperone or attend. Permission slips went home today in the Thursday folders so please sign and return those ASAP. We'll be in touch if you sign up to chaperone. Winter Concert: On December 20th from 5:25-7:20, students will amaze you with their wonderful voices. We will be using a small portion of our ELA class time on Monday, December 19th to have a dress rehearsal. Dress Down Day: Tomorrow students may dress down if they bring $1. This money goes toward students raising money to travel to Costa Rica in our middle school. Science Unit 2 ending soon: Our last day of science for unit 2 is on Tuesday, December 13th. Ms. Welte's homeroom will begin their second unit of social studies on Wednesday, December 14th with Mrs. Gravley. Math news: I will be holding open tutoring for my math class on Mondays from 3:35-4:15. Homework club: I will host a "homework club" on Tuesdays from 3:35-4:15 where any student who wants to join may have a place to silently complete their homework. Students are welcome to bring their own snacks and will go to the front office to be picked up unless I am notified of other arrangements prior. Happy Friday eve! :)
There's a lot going on these times of year so I'll just bullet point. -Highline is doing a canned food drive right now so feel free to send your kiddo off to school with a can of soup or beans. -We have a field trip coming up to the Denver Art Museum on December 14th. More information will go out to you after the holiday break. -Gratitude Celebration is next week on Tuesday from 3:05-3:30. Information should have gone out in Thursday folders for that today. -Crazy Hair Day for those who made their AR goals last month is tomorrow. Your child should have received a permission slip for it from their ELA teacher. -November birthdays will be celebrated on November 29th from 3:05-3:30. Please use the sign up sheet so we don't end up with a bunch of plates and nothing to eat. ;) -ELA and math teachers are planning on using every moment we have before break to get in a few more lessons and administer the mid-module math assessment or the end of unit ELA assessment so please email us if you know in advance that your child will not be here. We would rather steal a lunch recess than let them wait 9 days before finishing a test. -As the weather gets colder and considering it's Denver, please send your child to school with appropriate attire, expecting the worse. Indoor recess may be an option at times but not always. It is only indoor recess if the weather is cold enough or wet enough. P.E. shoes should also be taken into account when students walk out the door with snow boots. -The Winter Concert is right around the corner! Please check out Mrs. Davis' page to get more information including the songs so we can practice at home. Hello,
Happy Thursday! I am super excited to announce that the Donors Choose project to fund a field trip to the Denver Aquarium is fully funded after just 10 days! We will try to go as soon as possible so it can be most useful in students' ELA classes when they write about the animal defenses and adaptations. Thank you for your support in this, even if you just passed it along to your neighbors or family members. November 13th is World Kindness Day and to help students celebrate it and practice being kind, Mrs. Gravley began a month long kindness challenge for the fourth graders. We are taking one month to do random acts of kindness. Students are tracking them on their own personal calendars as well as a public calendar on the fourth grade bulletin board. We sent out an email explaining it a few days ago so please reply if you have any questions or comments. You can support your child by discussing what act of kindness they did or will do each day. Birthday Celebrations: These happen once a month on the last school day of the month unless it falls on a Wednesday, in which case it's the day prior. We celebrate each kiddo from that month with the treats you supply. Please sign up on the Birthday Sign Up sheet. It's hard to tell students we will have a celebration only to find out at the last moment that we won't. Run for Funds: I'm so proud to announce that out of just our homeroom, we raised $1,844 for Highline through the Run for Funds fundraiser. We celebrated our success on Wednesday. Important Dates: November 4th - New science unit begins for Welte's homeroom November 4th - Dress Down Day for $1 November 11th - Thanksgiving Lunch November 18th - AR Crazy Hair Day (students need a pass from ELA teacher) November 22nd - Gratitude Celebration November 23rd - 25th - No School November 29th - November birthday celebrations Hey there!
I'm not sure if you've heard already but our Run for Funds was extremely successful in that we raised well over our goal. Thank you for supporting such a fun way to raise money for Highline. It was so nice to see so many of you at conferences this fall. If you have any feedback on how they went, I can forward that to the admin or take it into consideration for the spring conferences. I am working on going through my conference notes and touching base with those parents who I met with. I appreciate your patience. The fourth grade team would like to take the fourth graders on a field trip to the aquarium. We study animal adaptations in the next module in ELA and some of the animals we talk about seem out of touch, like the mimic octopus. Visiting the aquarium would allow us to see those adaptations on other animals up close and personal. Please consider donating to our DonorsChoose project to fund this field trip or pass along the information to your friends, family, coworkers, neighbors etc. If someone donates within the next 7 days, DonorsChoose will match it up to $50. https://www.donorschoose.org/project/real-life-lessons-bring-learning-to-hear/2285426/ Tomorrow is the first AR dress down day. Students will bring home a slip granting them special permission to wear jeans with their REACH shirt, uniform shirt or Run for Funds shirt. At the end of the month, students will also receive a Pizza Hut coupon for reaching another goal in ELA class. Keep your eyes open for these two special awards to signal your child is meeting goals in ELA class. Good afternoon Highline families,
Today with Thursday folders you will receive a large white envelope with your child's academic data in it. Mrs. Verni-Lau sent a letter with it as well to describe the information you're receiving. Hopefully this will help you better prepare for conferences as they have changed slightly this year. With that said, the survey for conferences, which will allow us teachers to plan our conferences better so it is a productive, collaborative meeting between teachers and parents, will be closed at 8:00am tomorrow morning. Signups for the conferences will be sent out via VolunteerSpot on Monday according to the information from the surveys. Tomorrow is a dress down day for those who brought their dollar today or for those who remember to bring a dollar tomorrow. This money goes to support Highline Academy students in middle school. Remember next week we have picture retakes on October 13th and there is no school on Monday, October 17th. Wow today was a blast! I hope you saw the ClassDojo photos we snapped of the Run For Fund. I was so busy having so much fun spraying the kids with water and cheering them on that I only took before and after photos. Right before the event I told the students I would pledge a dollar for the top boy and top girl for each lap they ran and everyone blew my mind! Students ran almost the whole time! The top boy ran 50 laps with several boys coming in right behind him and the top girl ran 37 laps! Just to give you some insight, 32 laps was equivalent to 2 miles so don't be surprised if you have some tired kiddos tonight. :)
The pledge forms for the Fund Run is due October 6th. The prizes will be on October 12th. Tonight in your Thursday folders you'll find some important login information for Illuminate. Please log into Illuminate to see your child's progress in classes as we should be mostly caught up now. Thank you for your patience. If you have any questions or concerns regarding your child's grades or accessing Illuminate, please reach out to myself or the other teachers your child may have for other academic subjects. Conferences will look slightly different this year but Mrs. Verni-Lau will communicate more information to you regarding this matter. More to come next week. Today's Thursday folders were packed with assessments and information for you to review. Please contact your child's ELA and math teachers if you have any questions. Some teachers just got access to Illuminate although it was up and running a while ago so please continue to give grace.
There is no school on Monday, September 26th - next week. Students will complete their last day of their first unit in science on Tuesday of next week and the first day of their Social Studies class with Mrs. Gravley will start on Wednesday. :) You may have seen the Dojo picture of our 4th graders paired up with first graders to read and find nouns in text. The first grade teacher, Mrs. Gichuru, and I are working hard to make our Reading Buddy experience an educationally exciting one. Our September birthday celebration is coming up next Friday from 3:05-3:20. Please see the Birthday Sign Up. Bike/Walk to School event has grown to service two new locations (the two new locations are only for bikers due to the distance). If students have music recorders at home, they should bring them into school so they can use them in music. We do have some recorders to share but they are shared so it limits the opportunity for students to practice and get their ribbons - a big deal in 4th grade. Snacks were donated earlier this school year and we will soon run out so please ensure your child has a snack next week since we won't be able to provide one. We typically don't provide snack because it not only takes too long to pass out but we also have a variety of dietary restrictions for various reasons and can't provide everyone with what they need/want. Lastly, your children and I have been reading The Invention of Hugo Cabret and loving it. Feel free to ask your kiddo what happened in the story today - it's a great book and I heard the movie was good too. It's finally here! Illuminate is up and running! However, we have 5 weeks of grades to enter so please allow grace. Picture day was this Wednesday but retakes are available if your child was sick or squinting (it was a fun photo shoot taken outside this year) on Thursday, October 13th. A permission slip went home last week asking for your permission for students to use their own headphones and bring in eReaders for DEAR days. I'll be contacting some of you who left questions on the slips or haven't turned them in yet. The headphones are nice to have, especially the small ones (earbuds), so students can carry them to math and ELA to use during their computer station. Both headphones and eReaders are up to the student to be responsible for and use responsibly. Only a few students in my homeroom have brought their recorder to school. All 4th graders need to have their recorders and leave them at school for music class. Mrs. Davis found them for less than $5 available at Guitar Center in Denver. The style you're looking for is a Aulos Three Piece Soprano Recorder. I was supposed to put the letter in Thursday folders but I forgot so it's below. |
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