College/University Presentation

Good afternoon parents,

Each student will be presenting on a college or university on Friday, May 6. Each poster must include the following:

Name
Logo
Location
Year Founded
Number of Students Who Attend
One Tradition
Mascot
Best Degree or Major

Texas A&M Field Trip!

Good evening parents,

The Texas A&M Field trip is finally upon us. I am extremely excited for this opportunity, and I know that the students are as well. I will attach the field trip schedule and a parking map below, but I want to include important reminders so that you and your student can be prepared for the day. If you have any other questions, please let me know!

--Students and parent chaperones attending the field trip must arrive to the school between 5:30 and 5:55am.

--If you are a parent, you will not be able to leave any other children at Life School Oak Cliff. Many teachers do not arrive until well after we will depart from the campus and we cannot leave them unsupervised.

--If you are attending as a chaperone, you are responsible for your own travel and parking arrangements. Lunch will be provided for parents as well.

--If you are a chaperone, you are not allowed to bring any other children on the field trip, and only parents who have approved badges will be able to attend as chaperones.

--Students will not need to bring any electronics, pillows or blankets.

--Students may bring a water bottle and wear sunglasses if they would like.

--In order to take a child home, you must have your ID or your pick-up hangtag.

Itinerary

Class President!

Spelling Patterns Test 3/4/2016

Conversations Hearts Revising and Editing Test

Good Evening parents,

Below is the assessment we took today. The past three weeks in class, we've been working on transitional phrases and homophones. Below are two screenshots of the test (Front/Back) to show how work should be shown. Also, the answers are circled so that you can cross check with your student's answers. Students were mostly tested on questions 3-6. Please text or email if you have questions.

Homophone Presentation

Good afternoon parents,

This upcoming Friday, all students will present a poster presentation regarding homophones. Homophones are words that sound the same, but are spelled differently AND have different meaning. Each student was assigned one set of homophones today in class. They were responsible for writing down their assigned homophone, as well as all of the others (which will be tested next Friday!) Below is an example of a poster. It must include the word, a picture and a sentence. During the presentation, students must also present a hand signal to help students remember the differences between words.

These homophone groups will be tested next Friday. The students will not need to know how to spell them, rather, they will need to know how to use them in a sentence.

meat	meet	for	four	pair	pear	waist	waste
know	no	hour	our	dye	die	whole	hole
it’s	its	so	sew	herd	heard	knew	new
hear	here	ant	aunt	bored	board	piece	peace
road	rode	sea	see	bare	bear	break	brake
red	read	threw	through	two	too	to	they’re
there	their	bye	buy	by	write	rite	right

Glimpse at Texas A&M Field Trip

Good afternoon students and parents,

I am very excited to announce that 4th grade will participate in two field trips this semester. One of the trips is a great honor and privilege for the fourth grade students of Life School Oak Cliff. On Friday, April 29th, we will be attending my alma mater, Texas A&M University. This trip is a big deal for several reasons. One is that Texas A&M University is located approximately 170 miles away from Dallas and requires about 3 ½ hours of driving. For those students who are able to attend, this means waking up early because the bus leaves at 6am in the morning in order to reach the university campus by 10am. Last year was the first year of the trip, and we had an amazing time. We took part in a campus tour where the students learned a lot about college and later participated in activities such as rock wall climbing, zip-lining, and giant swings. While this year may be slightly different, I am excited for what it has to offer. I am writing this letter because we will be hosting a question and answer session for any parents interested in having their child attend the field trip. While this Q&A event is yet to be scheduled, I want to inform every parent that attending the Texas A&M field trip is a privilege that must be earned by each individual student.  Only students who exhibit behaviors representative of the fourth grade team and Life School Oak Cliff Elementary School will be allowed to attend. We will be sending more information in the coming weeks!

Sight Words for Dec. 11 Quiz

Good Evening parents,

I know that I have not posted anything in awhile, but this upcoming week (December 7-11) we have several important benchmarks. Please ensure that your child is fed and well-rested each day. Also, it is important that students bring a number two pencil! Here are the sight words for our quiz on December 11.

Irregular verbs

swim/swam
swing/swung
take/took
tear/tore
throw/threw
meet/met
wake/woke
wear/wore
write/wrote


Homophones:

wear/where
meet/meat
threw/through
bored/board

CUPS editing strategy

Good Afternoon Parents,


This is a very important post. Just a reminder about how the homework has changed--students will NO LONGER have to complete journals as part of homework. Instead of journaling, students will complete a one page worksheet. I am highly encouraging all parents to be the students of their child. I want the students to teach parents how to label answer choices and plug in answer choices. This homework should take less time than journaling. The sight word quiz will be on Friday, Nov. 20. Here are the sight words for that quiz.


1. shake/shook
2.sing/sang
3.speak/spoke
4.spring/sprang
5.steal/stole
6.rode/road
7.bear/bare
8.groan/grown
9.they're/their/there


Below is a video about CUPS. Students should be using CUPS as a testing strategy to label their answer choices and prove them either correct or incorrect. Below the video is a copy of the homework that shows students how to label correctly.

 

 

Front side (how to ca

 

 

 

 

Backside (How to label answer choices)

Good Evening Parents,

This past week students took their nine week assessment. It was only 6 questions, but it was a good overview of everything that has been taught since the beginning of the school year. This grade will NOT appear on the first nine weeks report card, however, because we took the test after grades were due. Please remember that our MINTS project is due tomorrow, Tuesday October 12th, 2015. If you are confused on how each card should look, you can check below for three different examples. There is also a video posted further back about how MINTS works. I have also posted an example of the nine weeks test below so that you can retest your student if you would like. Please email, text or call if you have any questions.


Sight words for the week

hang	hung	hide	hid
know	knew	lay	laid
lead	led	lie	lied
light	lit	lose	lost

Homophones for the weekà    peace    vs.     piece;         two/to/too

 

Nine WEEKS test  

 

Below is an example of three MINTS flashcards. On the front should be the example, and on the back should be an explanation (MINTS) for why the example needs to be capitalized. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Compound Sentences Quiz!

Good Evening Parents,

Below I've posted a video discussing compound sentences as well as the quiz we took today in class. Please let me know if you have any questions.

 

 

Week of September 22-25 Announcements

Good Evening Parents,

This week we will be covering a couple of different skills. We will discuss using commas in a series, apostrophes, and dialogue. I will most likely post a video sometime this week explaining each in more detail. Here are the sight words for the next two weeks. Please remember these won’t be tested until October 2^nd. This week (September 22-25) students should be journaling. I will only be checking for three entries this week.

fly	flew	forget	forgot
forgive	forgave	freeze	froze
get	got	give	gave
grow	grew	write	right
they’re	there	their

MINTS and SMALL MOMENT

Good Afternoon!

We are continuing to work on CAPITALIZATION this week, and I am sure many of you were wondering what we are doing with the "Tic Tac." I've posted a video below explaining the expectations for that project. Below the video, you will see a sample paper and a "Narrative Diamond," which is a plot map we use to make sure we are including different parts of the plot structure. If you have any questions, please feel free to call or text.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Dang that setence got a stanky breath!

Good afternoon parents,

This week we are working on capitalization. Please watch the video below to find out what the students learned today. Below is a hard copy of MINTS and the sight words for the next two weeks. Remember that students should be journaling, NOT writing sight word work!

 

 

 

M         Months, Days, Holidays

I           I instead of i

N          Names of people, places (cities, states, countries) and organizations

T          Titles of people (Doctor, President, Coach, etc.), books, movies, and organizations

Come	Came
Do	Did
Draw	Drew
Drink	Drank
Dream	Dreamt
Eat	Ate
Fall	Fell
Fight	Fought
By, Buy, Bye

S          Start of a sentence