Each week students need to practice new spelling words. These words come from our new reading series, Reach for Reading. They will have about 20 words each week to practice. If student have access to a computer, there is a great website they can use to take a pretest or practice those words.

Go to http://www.spellingcity.com (I've also provided a link on our student links page). On the left side start typing all the spelling words. If you run out of room click the +More button. When all the words are typed click the Spelling Test button.

Click Play to start the test. The program will say the sentence out loud and use it in a sentence. The students correctly type the word (no peaking at your list!).  Students can repeat the word or sentence. Click Next to go to hear next word.

They can have one more chance to look over their words to make sure they are spelled correctly. Click Done to see the results. The program will list all the words, showing the proper spelling for any misspelled words.  Here students have two options. They can click Practice and try again with the misspelled words.

Instead of that I have my kids click the printer icon in the upper right hand corner. Have students enter their name and click Report.

This generates a printed report showing all the spelling words, including the misspelled ones. Print out the report and have the students write the misspelled ones 3 or 5 times each, right on the paper. Here's what my sample test report looks like.

This month’s Scholastic Reading Club flyers are now available! Please take a few moments to explore the selection together and let your child help choose books he or she is excited to read.

You can order online at scholastic.com/readingclub, where you’ll find a wide selection of quality children’s books that are just right for your child’s reading level and interests. Or return your paper order form to me with a check made out to “Scholastic Reading Club.”

Remember, you help our class earn FREE Books and supplies with every order. Thank you for supporting your child’s reading both at home and in the classroom!

Please let me know if your order includes a gift for your child, and I will contact you when it arrives!

First Time Ordering Online?
Go to scholastic.com/readingclub
Enter our one-time Class Activation Code: Q9Y83
Shop and submit your child's book order.
Your books will be delivered directly to the classroom. 

Look up in the sky! It's a bird! It's a plane! Is that a jet? No, it's our 4th grade superheros! We have worked hard this week on several projects.

We started off the week with a snowball fight. We crumpled up colored pieces of paper and threw them at each other as if they were snowballs. Whatever color we ended up with was the the table group we get to sit at. Having a snowball fight helped us feel a lot cooler in this hot weather!

We got to know each other by creating a Who Am I? poster. We gave 4 clues about each of us to help you guess who the picture was. If you didn't guess by the last clue, we gave you the answer. We'll hang these projects up on our bulletin board. Come to our open house on Wednesday, September 14 to check them out.

In order to get ready for our first Mystery Skype, we've been learning about the 50 states. We started off with a word search to try and find the names of all 50 states.

In math we got started on our Xtramath. This is a website we can use to practice our basic math facts. If we don't get a time in class to practice our facts, we can do it at home as well. A link to the website is under the For Students tab. In math we also took a pretest on Place Value. This will help Mr. Thomas know who needs extra help learning about Place Value. We also decorated the cover of our Interactive Math Notebook.

When we went to the computer lab this week we created our computer logins and our Google accounts. We'll use those each week as we start doing more on the computers.