11/30

Dear Fourth and Fifth Grade Families,

Here are some notes and updates from our classroom:

Pen Pals
This year, our class will participate in a pen pal exchange with a 4th and 5th
grade class at Audubon Charter School in New Orleans. It is my goal that corresponding with
another student will be a fun and interesting way for your child to develop and practice the skills
of writing we’re working on this year.

With your permission, your child’s first name will be given to an individual pen pal in Mr. Schafer's class. Then your child will receive the name of his/her New York pen pal, and the
correspondence will begin. We will work on the letters in class, and they will count as graded
writing assignments throughout the remainder of the school year. We hope that all students will
be able to participate, but if students do not have permission to participate, they will still be
expected to complete assignments by writing to a family member.

Audubon charter school is a half Montessori, half French school, and Mr. Schafer's class is the Montessori section and has a lot of the same goals as our school including multi-grade classrooms and experiential learning. You can find more information about the school at their website: http://auduboncharter.com/ Students are encouraged to explore this website.

I am sending a form home with students. Please return this form by Monday, December 6.

Writing Homework
Students have done such a great job at writing long this year that we've changed our goal to write at least 3/4 of a page each night. Students who were already writing 3/4 page entries are encouraged to write full pages, and full page writers are writing even longer. If you haven't peeked in your child's writer's notebook lately, take a look a read some of the great stories s/he's been writing. We are especially working on using description and narrative voice in writing memoirs.

Cooking
We now have a mini fridge as well as a mini oven in the classroom, so it's time for some cooking. If you have a recipe you'd like to share with the class, please do. Parents are welcome to schedule a time to come and cook with us or send in favorite recipes for us to use.

African Burial Ground
As part of our study of slavery and the Civil War, we will be taking a field trip to the African Burial Ground on Thursday, December 9. You can visit their website for information about the memorial http://www.nps.gov/afbg/index.htm We will take the subway and be back by lunch. I'll send home permission slips tomorrow. Please bring them back as soon as possible. Please let me know if you'd like to come with us on this trip.


As always, if you need to contact me for any reason, you can reach me at stephschwartz@gmail.com or by leaving a note on my door or a message with anyone in the office.

Best,
Stephanie

November Class Notes

Dear Fourth and Fifth Grade Families,

Here are some notes and updates from our classroom:

Fall Family Conferences
It was such a pleasure to meet with most of you last week. If you haven't gotten a chance to sign up for a conference, please email me, so we can find a good time.

Fall Family Celebration
We will have our fall family celebration on Thursday at 10 AM in the classroom. All family members are welcome, and we invite you to bring your favorite family dish. I'll be bringing a variation of my Grandma's noodle kugel. I can't wait to taste your dishes.

Math Games
We are deep into our unit on multiplication and division. Here are some ways you can practice at home. While you're walking around the city or sitting at the dinner table, you can quiz students on their multiplication facts up to 12 x 12. Fourth graders love to play multiple turn over. Make a deck of cards with the numbers 2-50 or 2-80 or 2-120 depending on how challenging you want the game to be. Each player gets 10 cards, dealt face up. Players take turns choosing factors. When a factor is called, all players turn over any multiples of that factor. The first player to turn over all their multiples wins. Fifth graders love to play the factor game and the product game. You can find examples in your child's math notebook.

Memoirs
We have just begun a unit on memoir writing. Each student has chosen one small moment from their life to write about. This unit will focus on planning stories around a problem and solution, writing with description and narrative voice, and highlighting the heart of the story. Ask your child what he or she is writing about.

Slavery Study
We have also just started our unit on slavery and the Civil War. We are reading Jump Ship to Freedom, a novel about a young slave trying to buy his freedom in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War. We will be reading many picture books about West Africa and slavery in the coming weeks. We are also studying West African dance and culture in our Wednesday dance classes.

As always, if you need to contact me for any reason, you can reach me at stephschwartz@gmail.com or by leaving a note on my door or a message with anyone in the office.

Best,
Stephanie

Notes From Stephanie's Class

Dear Fourth and Fifth Grade Families,

The year is off to a great start, and I’d like to share some updates about our classroom with you.

Curriculum Night

Curriculum night will be held this Thursday, October 7. Please join me and other families to discuss upcoming curriculum. I am so excited to share with you my plans for the year!

Clean and Green

This year, the chancellor has asked custodians and teacher to switch to green cleaning products for classrooms. I welcome the opportunity to discuss green options with students, but I have to admit, I’m not so familiar with the options. If your family uses any green cleaning products that you like and aren’t too pricy, I’d appreciate if you share with me the product names and where they can be purchased. I’m especially looking for a replacement for Clorox wipes. Thanks!

Literacy

In reading, we have been noticing the emotions we feel as we read different passages. Books can make us feel happy, scared, angry, and sad. In writing, we’ve been writing our own stories about times when we felt a strong emotion. We’ve also been pushing ourselves to write longer by putting an “x” at the part of the page we want to write to and timing ourselves in short increments. At home, students should be reading at least 30 minutes every night and writing in their book log. Students are also writing a story or a continuation of a story every weeknight, pushing themselves to write more than they usually do (half a page for reluctant writers to 1 or more pages for eager readers).

Math

We love story problems! We’re working on skills we can use to solve any story problem. First, we read the problem and say in our own words, what it’s asking. Next, we write an open ended equation to show what operation we need to do (ex. 324 + 728 = ______). Then, we show our work as we solve the problem. Finally, we write our answers with a label. We are also practicing estimating so that we’ll know if our answer is in the ballpark.

Social Studies

Students are loving our study of current events and maps. We started the year by making quizzes that use information from atlases and trading them to help each other get used to looking information up in an atlas. We are also reading many current events articles, looking up their locations on the map, and discussing what we think about important issues. Soon we will start a unit on slavery and the civil war, and we are getting ready by reading a fictionalized story about an Angolan queen during the time of Portuguese colonization.

IndyKids

One source we love for current events articles is IndyKids, a newspaper for 4^th-8^th graders produced by volunteers here in New York. To help us pay for this year’s IndyKids subscription, please bring in $2. If you’re interested in getting involved with IndyKids, check out these upcoming meeting they’re holding at their office 666 Broadway (at Bond Street), 5th Floor (Funding Exchange office): Friday, October 8: Brainstorming Meeting, 7:15 pm (New Volunteer Orientation at 6:30 pm), Tuesday, October 19: Editing/Mock-up Meeting, 7:15 pm, Monday, November 1: Proofing Meeting, 7:15 pm, Saturday, November 6: Bundling/Mailing Meeting, 10:30 am. Let me know if you’d like to go to one of these meetings, and I’ll try to meet you there.

Classroom Jobs

Students were very excited to start classroom jobs last week. They worked as a class to brainstorm all the things we needed to get done in the classroom. Then, they each created a job application for one of the jobs. Finally, they applied for jobs by writing a paragraph about their plan for doing their job well. They are all working hard to keep our classroom clean and running smoothly.

As always, if you need to contact me for any reason, you can reach me at stephschwartz@gmail.com or by leaving a note on my door or a message with anyone in the office. I hope to see you Thursday.

Best,

Stephanie