A slideshow of photos from our trip to Old Salem
A suprise visit from Mrs. Dugan
Our Moravian Lovefeast
A slideshow of photos from our trip to Old Salem A suprise visit from Mrs. Dugan Our Moravian Lovefeast
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Trip to Old Salem
On Thursday, December the fourth grade will travel to Winston-Salem to explore "Old Salem", the Moravian community founded in the 18th century. We will leave by bus at 8:15am and arrive back to campus no later than 5:30pm, but it's usually closer to 5:00pm. Students will not need their regular backpack on that Thursday, but they should bring a jacket or coat, maybe even a hat. The high is projected to be approximately 34 degrees, and we will be outside all day long. Please help your child dress for the weather for our outside day of learning; barring rain, we even eat lunch outside. Please negotiate your expectations with your child ahead of time! If your child is bringing a lunch, please try to pack the lunch in a throw away container for ease of travel. A snack and water bottle are recommended for the bus ride. Students may also bring games, cards, paper, pencils, and/or a book. However, please help your child pack for the day without electronics. This is a school day. Students are encouraged to bring no more than $20.00 for the Winkler Bakery on Wednesday. For a cup of cider and a few Moravian cookies, students should only need $6-7. Some students like to buy a gift to take home, but less than $10.00 is more appropriate for a treat. Each group will stop at the bakery at some point during our visit to Old Salem. Students are not allowed to shop in the gift shops on this trip. From enriching experiences to enrichment classes, there has been no shortage of enrichment this month. See below for photos and updates. VISITING THE BIG MAP OF AFRICA WITH MR. SMITH On Friday we visited the big map of Africa with Middle School Social Studies teacher Grady Smith. We explored the continent, learned mapreading skills, located cities and countries and had a lot of fun along the way. Thank you, Mr. Smith, for bringing the big map to our school and sharing it with all of us! HEART DISSECTION WITH DR. ADDISON In Science on Monday we dissected a pig's heart with Dr. Addison, after having studied the circulatory system last week. Click through our slideshow to see our scientists at work. CHOIR, BAND & STRINGS CHOIR The 4th Grade Choir has been busily preparing for our holiday performance on Thursday, December 8th at the Wells Fargo Atrium at 12:00pm! All are invited for our performance. You may be hearing classic holiday songs at home. We have several pieces of music we are reviewing and learning for this performance. Our choir students are also learning the process of ear training and tuning. You may note students are reviewing solfeggio-a technique for learning to read music! BAND The 4th grade Band class has been amazing the past two months! We have done a good deal of practice reviewing rhythms that students learned in 3rd grade and before, as well as reviewing note identification. We have also begun learning simple songs by ear without printed music, which is a very important skill for all musicians to have regardless of age. Students will be getting new books this week! We have been working on respecting the environment in band class, including taking care of our instruments and not putting any instruments in harm's way. Students can practice their first five notes and the simple songs we have been learning by ear at home, and should practice 15 minutes at a time around 3-4 times a week. We will begin looking at music for our Winter Concert soon! Encourage them to perform a song we learned for you at home! STRINGS The exciting news from Strings is that we are playing in Chapel! Put Friday, December 9th on your calendar to join us in Community Chapel and hear your children perform Beethoven’s Ode to Joy as part of the worship service. For that service the students will need to wear their Concert Dress: long khaki pants and a white Trinity collared shirt. Meanwhile, we are forging on in the book and have reached the G string! That opens up a whole new set of keys to play in. In addition, we started learning our sheet music for the concert on February 2nd - it’s not hard, but it’s long and tiring! Regular practice at home will help build stamina! PE WITH MR. MARTIN PE
Fourth grade has been working on the intermediate basketball skills like crossover dribbles, shooting form, layup form, and free throw shooting.We spent two weeks working in skill stations and small group work. We are currently playing Net ball (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netball), a game derived from basketball popular in Commonwealth nations. The game’s rules and positions help drive home the fundamental principle of spacing during game play. We started our second trimester fitness goals with some adjustments being made to help students focus on their strengths and identify their weaknesses. They now have a greater amount of choice in the direction of their fitness. They have done a great job diving right into their fitness activities. ART At the end of each trimester students earn skill ratings on their report cards. We take time now to explain what each skill rating looks like in the art room. Observes and Reflects: Students taking time to look closely at their work and thinking about what their next steps may be. Students gathering suggestions from teachers and peers. Envisions and Expresses: Students coming up with ideas and creating work that is meaningful and is a vehicle for personal expression. Develops Craft and Engages and Persists: Students doing the hard work to finish a piece to the best of their ability. Stretches and Explores: Students working in different studios in order to build skills and confidence that help them grow as artists. Exhibits Scholarly Habits and Follows the Honor Code: Students behaving with kindness and respect while making choices that benefit the learning of every student. Fourth graders enjoyed mixing new colors for our painting studio. “Nacho Cheese” and “Lullaby Blue” were favorites. The newly opened clay studio is a big hit! FAITH STUDIES Fourth graders continue to be very thoughtful during our time in Faith Studies. We started the month with a lesson on All Saint’s Day and the students participated in a saint scavenger hunt around the school. We moved from the gospel of Mark to the gospel of Matthew this month and the students really enjoyed acting out and interpreting some of the parables found in Matthew. We also read both of the feeding miracle stories found in Matthew and compared their similarities and differences. Mrs. Williams led a hymn study this month on the hymn, “Once in Royal David’s City.” As we move into the season of Advent, we will compare the Christmas stories found in each of the gospels. We started last week with looking at the “Ancestors of Jesus” listed in Matthew and in Luke and then creating our own Family Trees. Fourth grade students will also create ornaments for the Jesse Tree which will be in the lobby for the month of December. I really enjoy working with your fourth graders. Please reach out to me with any questions. Grace and peace, Rev. Lindsey Peery ([email protected]) SPANISH Fourth graders have been practicing the verb to be (SER) to describe people, places and objects. We are also using subject pronouns and adjectives to make full sentences. Children are working on the topic of community, and doing a review of greetings and good byes weekly. We use puppets and play games to practice conversations and vocabulary words. We are almost at the end of unit 1, Nos Conocemos, so now it would be a great time for you and your children to visit their online accounts (trinityepiscopal.schoology.com) and practice/review some of the skills we have been working on in class. The week 3 and 4 online activities under Unit 1's "Descubre Online" section would be great practice of new vocabulary words, greetings and the verb ser. Also, you might want to check out the videos embedded in the "U1 eBook" on pages 18, 26, 34, and 42. They are only 3-5 minutes long and each one reviews one "week/semana" of the program. (Remember that Spanish only meets twice a week, so one week in Santillana is more like 3 weeks for Trinity!) WELLNESS The fourth graders have been enjoying a wellness lesson every other week. We recently discussed the difference between “just kidding” and using hurtful language. The 4th graders were able to engage in a great conversation about what they thought the difference was between joking with someone and hurting someone’s feelings. We explored the concept of empathy and the 4th graders were able to understand what it means to “stand in someone else’s shoes” and imagine how someone else might be feeling. We then examined different scenarios and discussed whether each scenario referred to a situation where the students were “just kidding” with each other or if they were using hurtful language and hurting people’s feelings in the process. The 4th graders enjoyed the scenarios and we concluded with a discussion surrounding how we can be more intentional about noticing other people’s feelings and recognizing when we have hurt someone’s feelings. We discussed that we are not perfect and sometimes we may think we are just joking around and our intentions are not harmful but we still hurt someone’s feelings in the process. We considered how we can tell when we have hurt someone’s feelings and brainstormed various ways that we can apologize and take ownership over our words. In addition, for our next wellness lesson this month we discussed the idea of assumptions and how making assumptions affects others. We talked about what an assumption is and listed examples of assumptions that have been made about us as well as assumptions that we have made about others. We did an activity where I read instructions aloud for how to draw a bug. The students were not allowed to talk, ask questions, or look at each other’s bug drawings. The end result was that everyone’s bug drawings looked different, despite having been given the same directions. The 4th graders engaged in great conversation about why the bugs all turned out differently and the importance of gaining more information through clarifying questions. We concluded with a discussion around the idea that everyone interprets things differently which is part of what makes the world a wonderful place, but that as a result we can not always assume we know what others mean without asking clarifying questions and learning more information. I am enjoying teaching Wellness to your 4th graders and wanted to introduce myself as the new counselor at Trinity. Please do not hesitate to reach out with any comments or questions! -Kimberly Enicks; [email protected] TECHNOLOGY What a treat it is to work with fourth grade students on a regular basis! In our sessions this far, students were introduced to typing with Typing Club and navigating the newly introduced Chromebooks. In addition, I introduced Google Classroom since all students have access to the G Suite (Google Drive apps) in fourth grade. We have tried our hand at coding a few times. Starting with Blockly, a drag-and-drop interface that helps develop computational thinking, students were able to progress quickly. As a challenge to them, I have introduced JavaScript coding through Khan Academy. It is challenging, but they are trying hard. Ask your child to log in with you and show you what they know how to do. This week (December 5-9) is Computer Science week, and we will be observing the annual Hour of Code. More information about the Hour of Code will be in this week’s Good News. |
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May 2017
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