The Anne Sullivan School
gR
P.S. 238
Greetings Parents
Welcome to the fourth grade! I am so privileged and
excited to be working with your children this school
year. We have many exciting things planned and a lot
of work to do! Please be sure that your child is
completing all of his/her homework assignments
carefully and with great effort. In addition, each night
the children are required to read for at least 20
minutes and to complete their reading log. Please
monitor this reading time and be sure that your child is
engaged in the reading he/she is doing. With your
help at home, each child can have a successful school
year and that is our main goal!
Mrs. Ratner
This Month’s Events
The children have been participating in a special
ballroom dance program since the middle of
September and have been having great success with
that. We are also pleased to announce that our ESL
program is up and running. Mrs. Nadel looks forward
to working with some of your children this school
year.
Science and Social Studies
This year Ms. Goldberg will be our science teacher.
Our first unit in Science focuses on animals and
plants in their environment. In September, we
learned how living things, or organisms, get
classified and how they get their energy. This month
students will be learning about animal behaviors,
animal needs and ecosystems. This year in Science,
students will be exposed to a lot of new vocabulary.
They are creating their own flashcards that will help
them understand these new words. Students take
their flashcards home to study. Please assist them
in practicing these new vocabulary words.
In Social Studies, we will be learning about the
Native Americans of New York State. We will discuss
how they lived, the resources they used, traditions
and how they were governed. Throughout the year
students will be developing social studies vocabulary
flashcards. They will be using these cards to
reinforce vocabulary that will be on their 5th grade
State-Wide Social Studies Examination.
1633 East 8th Street
Brooklyn, NY 11223
October 2009
Volume 1, Issue 1
Reader’s Workshop
I have spent the first month of school assessing
your child’s reading level on a one-to-one basis.
In doing so, we are learning about your child’s
strengths and weaknesses. This will allow us to
group the children accordingly and provide them
with the appropriate instruction. We will be
working with different groups, teaching them
strategies and skills to increase their
comprehension and fluency. These are life- long
lessons and hopefully will make your children
stronger in literacy as they go on to later grades.
Writer’s Workshop
For our first writing piece, we will be focusing
on a narrative account, which is simply a story.
We have decided to teach the children how to
write their very own fables. I will be using
standard-based lessons to teach them the
elements of a fable and will be using the writing
process to complete this task. In the first
month of school, we set up the rituals and
routines that we expect to be followed during
our writer’s workshop. One key component of
this is for your child to work independently and
stay focused on their writing. It is hard work
and we look forward to seeing the published
pieces.
Everyday Mathematics
For the month of October, we will be
completing Units 2 and 3 in our Everyday Math
program. We will cover addition and
subtraction of multi-digit numbers, displaying
data on a bar graph, multiplication and division
facts, and working with number sentences. A
great deal of what we will be teaching was
taught to the children in previous years. Please
be sure to assist your child, if necessary, and
encourage him/her to memorize the
multiplication and division facts. It will only
help your children to be successful now and in
the future.