Second Parent Letter

September 12, 2008
Waterville Elementary 4th grade

Dear Parents,

Most of us are almost finished writing our story about ourselves. When we are done writing, we check it over for capitals, periods, question marks, apostrophes and spelling. On Thursday 5 people shared their writing during Author’s Chair.

Another thing from this week was that we made a pie graph showing what a 4th grader does in a 24 hour day. We were learning how to read and write military time. For example, 6 in the afternoon is 1800 in military time. O100 is one o’clock in the morning.

We have been doing a great job of getting our math homework finished. Some of us forgot to complete our spelling and reading homework pages though. We are hoping you will help us remember and find time to do ALL our homework.

Finally, Mrs. Petersen made a Jeopardy game for the computer and we played it on Friday. When we got an answer correct, we got Petersen bucks. The topics were about our new Spelling Resource book and other class topics. Some were about Washington state and some were about how we do things.

Your money-making horny toad,

4th grader

September 5, 2008
Waterville 4th grade

Dear parents,
We would like to tell you about our new students and what things we did this week.

The new students in our class this year are Aitana, Cheyenne, Devon and Nik. Aitana is a good friend to have. She sticks up for others. She came from the Wenatchee school system. Cheyenne is very kind to others. She is playful and fun to be around. She was in our class in K and first grade and now she’s back! One of the new boys in our class is Devon. He is a good friend and fun to play with. Devon use to live in Kelso. Right now he is the tallest kid in our class and Katja is so glad she’s not the tallest anymore. Finally, Nik came to us from Orondo. He lives in Waterville and was with us in K. He is good at sports.
This week, we have tried out all enrichments. On Wednesday, we went to PE. Thursday was hand/key and we had real computers to do keyboarding on. Finally, on Friday we went to art and music.

We have already done two math lessons with homework over the weekend. We like the challenging and fun math. We have learned how to find an unknown (x, t, a) in an addition problem by subtracting. For writing, we reviewed how to plan an expository piece of writing about things we put in our bags that tell people about us. Mrs. Petersen was so happy that we remembered how to plan with green, yellow and red. She was also speechless when we all returned our parent signed forms on the first day! Our reward was 5 Petersen $$ in our very own wallet.

Your sweet loving 4th grader,

Video Clips from our new Flip Camera

We took some video segments using the new Flip Camera. First you will see us marching while we chant the parts of an Expository plan. It seems silly, but the parts stay in our heads. Then you will see a few quick shots of Tyler and Katja reading with their partner. Finally, Rochelle and Dillon will introduce you to a yearling horny toad that we are observing. We have named him Pancake.