Welcome to Mrs. April Fishel's Homepage Please Check the Homework Link for an update of current units of study! NEWS....NEWS.....NEWS....NEWS....NEWS....NEWS....NEWS....NEWS....NEWS.... Fourth Graders will be participating in 4-H. Some of the projects will be required of all students and thus will count as a test grade in a predetermined subject. Some projects will be optional and thus count as extra credit in a predetermined subject. On January 19th, our class will be participating in the speech contest. This will count as test grade in Language. Refer to the handbook for details. We will work on this some in class. All students must be ready to present their speech to me prior to this date. General Parent Information We are going to be reading many chapter books in addition to our reading textbook. We will be reading Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing and Mr. Popper's Penguins. These chapter books will be used only at school so if you want, you may purchase a personal copy of each for your child to read and work from at home. This is not necessary, however some students love having their own copy. All titles are available at www.amazon.com We will have weekly spelling and reading tests. These will be on Thursdays and Fridays. We will also have periodic Language quizzes and unit tests. There are only 7 units of study in our Language series so we will have 1-2 big tests each six weeks and the rest of the quizzes will also count as test grades. Math tests will be given every 1-2 weeks and some quizzes will also be given. Math is the one subject in which there will be some homework each night. This homework should take no more than 15-20 minutes to complete considering some class time is given to work on the assignment. Students in 4th grade are required to learn their multiplication tables as well as basic addition and subtraction. We will be completing timed tests covering addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Many of the skills we work on in math require students to be able to complete basic computation quickly in order to be successful. Please work with your child on these daily. Science and Social Studies tests will be given every 2-3 weeks depending on the length of the unit of study. Please understand that there is a lot of information in each chapter. Study guides will be given prior to each test, but not keeping up with the reading can be diastrous. We will go over the information in depth, but it is the child's responsibility to study for each test. Any tests will be announced several days in advance and should be written in the agenda book for parents to see. Conduct Charts: In an effort to help students become more responsible for their behaviors, the discipline policy in my classroom is based on a conduct chart. These will be sent home weekly and must be signed. Please look for the Monday folder to come home each week containing graded papers, conduct charts, and other important information. Please refer to the orientation packet for more information.