Thursday, 9/2

RELIGION: finish center of flower
MATH: wkbk page 3 and 4
SCIENCE: cover book
OTHER: ***GOAL DUE TOMORROW
THINGS TO BRING HOME:
THINGS TO BRING TO SCHOOL:
Un-birthday
Blue goal sheet
Emergency forms due next Friday
Tuesday Envelope
Band information
***Girls wear skirts and boys wear pant
everyone brings a sweatshirt and picture envelope

Wednesday, 9/1

READING: cover reading book
LANGUAGE ARTS: Finish tee shirt and face
OTHER: blue goal sheet is due on Friday
THINGS TO BRING HOME:
THINGS TO BRING TO SCHOOL:
Blue Goal sheet
Emergency Forms (due next Friday)
Supplies
Un-Birthday

Tuesday, 8/31

LANGUAGE ARTS: Getting to Know You worksheet
OTHER: Goal sheet is due on Friday
THINGS TO BRING HOME:
Tuesday Envelope
THINGS TO BRING TO SCHOOL:
Supplies
Un-birthday
Blue Goal sheet
Cover Math book

August 30, 2010

Dear Parents,

Welcome back to another school year. My name is Tricia Heissenbuttel and I am very excited to be teaching your children this year. Fourth grade is an important transition year. Your children will be reading textbooks for content, will learn how to do research, will need to study for tests, will be writing their own homework in their assignment books, will learn to take notes, and will receive letter grades for the first time. It is also a year full of excitement with our Science Fair projects, our California missions and Gold Rush simulations, our class musical called “It’s Electrifying,” and our fieldtrip on a bus to Sacramento. Together, I hope you and I can work to help your children to be successful.

On the first day of each week your children will have in their homework folders a letter like this one. The purpose of this letter is to tell you what we have done the previous week, what we will be doing in the upcoming week in fourth grade, and how you can help your child at home. This letter will be stapled to your child’s work from the previous week. On Monday nights, please take some time to review and discuss this work with your child. This letter will also be posted on the 4th grade blog at http://sjcschool.org/blogs/grade4/.

Tomorrow your children will receive their assignment books. Each afternoon before dismissal, I will stamp their assignment books after they have written down all their homework. I ask that you sign this page at the bottom each night after your child completes her or his homework. There is also a space that we can use to communicate with each other. Each morning, I will check for those signatures and notes as I collect homework. Homework, letters home, and other important information will go home in your children’s homework folders. If these start to fall apart, feel free to replace them throughout the year. The only requirement is that they MUST fit into your child’s desk, therefore binders and other large folders are not acceptable.

Each week we will celebrate a Superstar in fourth grade. I will send home a poster on Monday with the Superstar for the following week. Your child will have a week to complete this poster. The poster must be brought to school the following Monday, but if your child completes his or her poster earlier in the week it can be brought to school when it is completed. This poster will be shared with the class and posted on our Superstar board. Our first Superstar will receive his or her poster tomorrow and will return it on or before next Tuesday.

Beginning tomorrow night your child will be taking home one book a night to be covered and returned to school the next day. Please take this opportunity to review the books with your children to get an idea of what we will be learning this year.

Tomorrow night you and your children will have a homework assignment to complete together. I ask that you think about and discuss some of the strengths and weaknesses they possess. Please focus on many strengths and only one weakness that you can help your child to work to improve over the first quarter. Please make sure that this is a realistic and obtainable goal for your child and please stay away from stating a grade value in the goal. Together, think of specific steps that your child can do every day or week to reach this goal. This will be due on Thursday. I will be sending home a card with the goal after Back to School Night that you can post somewhere in your home to track progress. This card will be collected at the end of the quarter.

Please make sure that your child brings all of their supplies to school by this Wednesday. Attached to this letter is a complete list of fourth grade supplies. If an item is checked, it means that your child still needs to bring in that item. All emergency cards, summer reading lists, summer school forms, sport transportation forms, Diocesan waivers, volunteer driver information, and medication forms are due Friday, September 10. Many of these will be completed online this year, but you will need to print the Emergency Card, sign it and return it to school. Please be especially aware of the volunteer driver information form. If you think that you may drive on a fieldtrip this year, please send it in with a photocopy of your license and proof of car insurance. If fourth grade has 100% returned by the 10th, we will get a free dress day. Let’s win it!

Feel free to drop by the classroom, introduce yourself and ask questions. I am looking forward to meeting you next Thursday at “Back To School Night.” I am excited to work closely with you and your children to provide a fourth grade year full of fun and learning.

Sincerely,
Mrs. Tricia Heissenbuttel

June 7, 2010

Dear Parents,

I can hardly believe that our 4th grade year is over. It feels like yesterday that your children came into the 4th grade classroom excited to be a big kid in the big kid courtyard. But when I look at our class picture from September, I can see how each of them has grown physically and think about how much each of them has grown in knowledge, responsibility, and maturity. I am very proud of them and will truly miss them. This class has an enthusiastic, caring and inclusive spirit that is very special and I am sad to see them leave fourth grade.

Your children learned a lot about graphing with positive and negative numbers last week. They caught on very quickly and really enjoyed it.

Tomorrow is our class picnic at Las Palmas Park. Your children should bring a towel, sunscreen (please apply this before your child comes to school), and dry clothes to change into at the end of the party. Please label all items clearly. I would like to thank all our volunteers. If you volunteered to drive or chaperone, your child has another letter containing directions and a list of which children you will be driving. Thank you for your help.

I have included in this final Monday packet some ideas about simple and fun ways that you can continue your child’s learning this summer at home. Mathletics is a great way to help your children stay sharp with their math skills. I have included a copy of the Mathletics website with your child’s user name and password in today’s packet.

Thank you so much for all of the support that you shared with your children and me this year. I feel that the work that you do at home with your children has enabled them to learn so much more than most 4th graders. Both your children and I are very, very lucky to have you. Thank you for a wonderful year at St Joseph.

Sincerely,
Tricia Heissenbuttel
triciaheis@aol.com

Thursday, June 3, 2010

READING: read for 20 minutes; NO log
LA: Thursday Cursive
SPELLING: NONE
MATH: wkbk pages 203 and 204
RELGION: Be thoughtful to those who need it
THINGS TO TAKE HOME:
THINGS TO BRING TO SCHOOL:
Permission slip
Volleyball or track uniform
Yellow goal card

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

READING: read for 20 minutes; NO log
LA: Wednesday Cursive
SPELLING: NONE
MATH: wkbk pages
RELIGION: be thoughtful to those who need it
THINGS TO TAKE HOME:
Tuesday Envelope
Spelling book
Reading workbook
THINGS TO BRING TO SCHOOL:
Yellow goal card
Permission slip
Volleyball or track uniform

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

READING: read for 20 minutes; NO log
LA: Monday Cursive
SPELLING: NONE
MATH: wkbk pages 197 and 199
SS: wksh
RELIGION: be thoughtful to those on your paper
THINGS TO TAKE HOME:
Monday Packet
THINGS TO BRING TO SCHOOL:
Tuesday Envelope
Permission slip
Volleyball or track uniform

June 1, 2010

Dear Parents,

The end of this school year is bittersweet for me. Although I am happy for summer and to see such growth in all of your children this year, I am also very sad for them to leave fourth grade. Your children are a very bright and enthusiastic group who really treat each other with such love and kindness. They really are a special group and I have LOVED being their teacher. Thank you for sharing them with me this year.
In Religion this week we will learn about the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy. They will discover that our job as Christians is to love completely, just as Jesus does.

Last week’s geometry test is in this packet. Please review it with your children. This week we will learn how to graph ordered pairs of integers, negative and positive numbers. There will not be a math test this week.
Your children have shown incredible improvement in their writing ability since the beginning of the year. This week your children will bring home their writing folders that contain the final drafts of all the formal writing assignments that they have completed this year. Take some time to review it with your child and celebrate his or her successes.
In Science we learned about how magnets interact with each other and our Earth. This week we will how magnets and electricity work together to make electromagnets.

On Tuesday, June 9, we will be going to Las Palmas Park. I want to extend a special thanks to all of you who volunteered to help at our picnic. Since we have some extra money left over in our fieldtrip fund this year (thanks to all of you that came to our 4th grade Bingo nights), lunch will be provided to all of your children. Our room moms, Sally Cincu and Renee Fujii, have arranged for a pizza lunch with juice and/or water and plenty of choices for dessert. We will have fruit and otter pops for snacks.
As I mentioned in last week’s letter, there is a creek and a water sprayer so dry shoes may be helpful. Your child should also bring a towel, sunscreen (please apply this before your child comes to school), and dry clothes to change into at the end of the party. Please label all clothing items clearly.

Please send your child’s 4th quarter goal card into school by Wednesday of this week. Thanks again for all of your support. If you have any questions or concerns please drop by, or e-mail me at triciaheis@aol.com.

Sincerely,
Tricia Heissenbuttel

Thursday, May 27, 2010

READING: read for 20 minutes and complete log
LA: Thursday Cursive
SPELLING: study for test
MATH: Mathletics
THINGS TO TAKE HOME:
THINGS TO BRING TO SCHOOL:
Tuesday Envelope
Permission slip
Carnival Art contest entries due tomorrow