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