Back to School Night a Success

Back to School Night was a great success. I enjoyed meeting so many of you. Thank you for taking the time to come visit your child's classroom. I know as we work hard together this year, your child will have a successful fourth grade year. Hopefully you took some time to visit our "Hall of Fame" in the main hall and enjoyed reading about our "Cast of Fourth Grade." We have some unbelievable cast members this year.

We also enjoyed making our "big body twins" to keep our seat warm until we made it to Back to School Night. Can you guess who is the "real" fourth grader?

21st Century Learning

We love having 20 new laptops in our classroom this year. We can't wait to create many projects on our laptops this year. Today we went to our computer lap and worked on brand new "big screen" mac computers. We created an acrostic poem that is now hanging up in our room. Don't forget to come to back to school night to see what we have been working hard on.

We are also enjoying having a new document camera in our classroom (see picture of Scott above). This camera allows anything to be shown underneath of it. During this particular lesson, Scott is modeling the long/short vowel sort to the class. This is an amazing new piece of technology that creates great fun with the learning process. As a teacher, I love putting student's work under the camera for everyone to see.

September in Full Swing

We had a great four day week of school and filled every second with more learning. We continued to graph in math, enjoyed participating in some Reader's Theaters, wrote a Bio Poem about ourselves, sorted short and long vowel words and started our map unit talking about longitude and latitude. Fourth graders are busy using their colored pencils to create beautiful looking maps of the world, the United States and much more. This week we will cover the great state of Utah and learn all about the landforms of the state we live in. Be looking for a note coming home about salt dough that will need to be made at home and brought to school. We will be making a salt dough landform map of Utah. The end products are amazing.

This group of fourth graders continue to amaze me. They are awesome workers and always try their best at anything given to them. We continue to explore work on the laptops. They have been going into the site historyforkids.utah.gov to learn more about Utah State symbols and facts. This is a great site to explore in.

We also continue to learn all the new procedures that come with a new teacher and a new school year. We are trying to create habits (ALL GOOD ONES) that will help us be better students and listeners. Thanks again to all the parents at home for the terrific things you do at home with your child. One last thing--DON'T FORGET TO READ 20 MINUTES EVERY NIGHT!

Week One Down!

Thank you to all you great fourth graders and fourth grade parents for making our first week of school so successful. I applaud each one of you for getting to school on time and coming to school ready to learn. We kind of eased our way into a brief introduction of many academic areas, so I think we are ready to go full force next week. We have been learning about different kinds of graphs, worked hard on addition mad minutes, enjoyed learning about Utah State Symbols on our laptops, read "Tanya's Reunion" while making connections to our own family reunions and wrote a story about being an M&M (Marvelous and Magnificent) Kid. The weeks ahead will continue to be filled with excitement. We will begin a three week long unit in Social Studies on maps. I encourage you to talk with your child about the great things they are learning. Please don't forget to READ, READ and READ each and every night---then fill in your fact/feeling each day. LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION--LET THE LEARNING BEGIN!

Just a little side story:

On Monday, our first day of school, the kids came in from their lunch recess and said there was a house on fire near the school. Mr. Theobald shortly thereafter made an announcement letting us know that the air quality was bad because of the fire and wanting everyone in for the remainder of the day. About 2:30 that afternoon Mrs. Horsely, an aid at the school, came into our classroom to ask me if my house was okay because of the fire in Corner Canyon in Draper. We then learned it was a fire on the mountain, not a house. Knowing nothing of the situation I immediately called home and spoke to my daughter. I thought I would share the pictures that she was taking as she was watching the situation from our back deck. I know the kids all went home worried about "Mrs. Morrison's house", but we are all so glad that the winds continued to blow to the north away from our house. We won't forget the smell from the fire we smelt even inside the school building. This is one current event we won't forget about our "first day of school."

Homework in Fourth Grade

Each night your child will come home with their planner.  All homework that needs to be accomplished that evening will be written in the planner.  Please sign your child's planner EACH night.  If the child did not finish the homework, please still sign the planner and indicate which homework was not completed.  Thank you for all your support from home.  As we work together, great things will be accomplished this year.  I look forward to meeting each one of you at our Back to School Night on September 11th at 7:00.  Please check your child's planner each night for other important notes and information.