Friday, February 14th: Friendship Celebration & Card Exchange
Friendship Celebration (AKA Valentines Day)
The Puffins will show appreciation for our classroom community and friendships with a Friendship Celebration at the end of the day on February 14th. If your Puffin would like to bring in cards for their classmates, they MUST bring one for every student.
There are 26 students in the Puffin Nest.
It actually works best if they do NOT write out individual names on cards- it makes it much easier to pass around! Students can make cards or buy them. Please be modest with candy contributions; Puffins will not be allowed to eat treats at school.
Monday, February 17th: NO SCHOOL Presidents Day Holiday
Thursday, Feb. 20th: FGCS Celebrations of Learning!
Our School-wide Open House from 5-6:30pm
Level 2 students will be presenting stop motion animation from their own fairytale adaptations!
FGCS YEARBOOK: The 2019-20 FGCS Yearbook is now available to order online! Click here to purchase a yearbook with credit or debit. If you prefer to pay with cash or check, you may do that in the office using this form, which is also available in the school office. Yearbook orders are due by 3 p.m. Fri., March 20.
What’s happening in the Puffin Nest?
This week, Storyteller Alton Chung visited our classroom for a storytelling workshop!
In addition to captivating our kiddos with exciting and hilarious stories, he also focused on how the kids can work to create their own tales. He reviewed the structure of stories and led fun exercises that challenged the students to jump into the story. Before leaving, he gave the Puffins some tips on narration for their voice-over work with stop motion.
Our "Fairytale Adaptations" Writing Unit & Stop Motion Animations!
- We started our fairy tale writing unit by reading and listening to many original fairy tales. We saw that it’s all about Characters – Setting – Motivation – Trouble – and Resolution.
- We studied Modern Fairy Tale Adaptations to help us with writing our own. We looked closely at the changes that authors made and noticed that they usually made one big important change to improve the story.
- We drafted, revised and published our own adaptations of fairytales.
This week, we began to use the fairytale writing to create our own stop motion animation! Students are studying their stories, and using them to create storyboards, characters, and backgrounds for filming their stop motion animations.
Our current class Read Aloud:
Where The Mountain Meets The Moon by Grace Lin. This story incorporates many Chinese folk tales told by the main character's father, which makes it a great fit with our focus on folktales & storytelling!
Level 2 Suggested Weekly Homework:
Reading Homework
Spend at least 20 minutes reading (outside of school) every day.
Typing Homework
Level 2 students have typing homework to develop and support important keyboarding skills. Please practice at least 20 minutes per week on: Typing.com
Math homework
It is strongly recommended that your student practice math skills at least 30 minutes (or more) per week.
Click here for DreamBox
Recent 4th grade Math Topics:
- Multiplication: 1 digit by 2 digit and 2 digit by 2 digit using the "area method"
- Divide 1 digit by 2 , 3 and 4 digits using an area model
- Division Algorithm (AKA: Long Division) Watch a Video!
- Fractions
Prefer a worksheet for math homework? You can download here, or your student can pick up a paper copy in class.
Here are the practice pages for the previous weeks:
- Homework #1: Introduction to Fractions
- Homework #2: Unit Fractions/ Finding Fractions on a Number line
- Homework #3: Comparing Fractions
- Homework #4: Adding & Subtracting Fractions