January 25-29, 2021

This week marks our first Monday of the third quarter. The students need to meet with me on Teams from 9:00-9:30. They will then proceed to complete all the independent work assigned to them. The district has directed us to assign 210 minutes of independent work for each Monday that is not a holiday. Yes….3 ½ hours of independent work. I will go over the work during our morning meeting, post a detailed list on our general channel, and provide a Teams assignment card for most of the assignments. Our fourth-grade team has worked together to assign work that relates to our curriculum and standards and goes along with our classroom work. Some students will finish in less time, other may take more. Please help your child understand that this is not a vacation day; it is an independent work day. I will be available by Teams chat if your child has questions. They have all gotten very good at reaching me on our Teams chat and I will respond as quickly as I possibly can.

Part of the Monday assignment will be looking at ATLAS and seeing which assignments are incomplete or missing. This will be a second chance for students to turn in work, but it will only be for the work from the prior week. If a student submits/completes old work, a chat message needs to be sent so I know to regrade it.

Please remember to check your child’s chat with me on a regular basis and either praise them for the lack of reminders from me or encourage them to complete the work in a timely manner so they are not receiving reminders. I am still sending out a lot of messages each night, with some of the work never being turned in. I cannot give a grade to work I do not receive.

Mark your calendars…on February 17 we will have a pick-up for Rancho Day materials. This is a fun fourth-grade Manchester tradition of a Rancho inspired craft day. We will have a contact-free pick-up and the materials will be available throughout the day.

The students should be completing one Spelling City activity from the Weekly Work assignment each day. I will be scoring what has been completed at 5:00 PM every Thursday and will not extend that period for regrading. Some students are waiting until Thursday and are not finishing the work on time. Please have a conversation about the importance of not procrastinating. Each activity takes ten minutes at most, so a little a day is easy to accomplish.

We have finished our second set of WordMaster definition cards. Your child should have 25 words with all the definitions. I have had them send me pictures of the ones they did for independent work, but not the ones we completed together in class. I informed them that I would be asking you to check and make sure they have all 25 completed and ready to use for studying the words.

Thank you for your support at home and for helping your child make this year a truly educational one! I appreciate all that you do to make this work.

Lanie Huene

From our music teacher, Mrs. Hendrickson--

Hello everyone--our students are doing a great job in music class considering the circumstances. This week I've been concentrating on making sure that every student has an opportunity to answer questions and be an active participant. It helps a great deal if the student is in a relatively quiet learning environment or has decent quality headphones--by it's nature music class has a lot of listening! Please contact me at anne.hendrickson@fresnounified.org if you have any questions. Thank you!

Anne M. Hendrickson