Don't Cry

More Information

The test will be next week

Fourth Grade Mystery Game

Akkad Technologies announced last week that they had invented a new kind of car that can drive itself. They kept the plans for this car on a large computer in their main office building.

On Tuesday, when the janitor opened the building, the computer was gone. No one had gone into the computer room on Monday. The last time that anyone saw the computer was Sunday.

The janitor and the president of the company, Kaitlin Akkad, are the only people that have keys to the building. You are the police. You have to figure out who stole the computer and get it back. The plans that are on that computer are worth 15 million dollars.

Think about what information you need to know to help you find the thief. Think about who, what, when, where, how questions.


You are going to talk to the first policeman who went to the building. Think about what you want to ask him
Kaitlin Akkad

You are the owner of Akkad technologies. It is a very valuable company. Your father invented the refrigerator and made 30 million dollars. You have never invented anything and the company has been losing money since your father died. You only have 100 dollars left.

The car that drives itself was going to be your invention. It was going to make you millions and make your mother think that you are as good as your father.

You didn't have any security at the building that night, because you didn't have any money, but you did go to the building Sunday night to work on the plans. You didn't see anyone there. There are security cameras.

You don't have any family but you do have a boyfriend who wants to marry you. You told him you wouldn't marry him until you got your father's money back.

The company will make money because you had insurance.

Insurance is when you pay money to someone so if something bad happens you will be safe. When you drive a car you pay a little bit of money each month. Then if you crash into someone the insurance pays for their car to be fixed.

You will get 30 million from your insurance company if the police don't find the plans for your car.

You are happy to have the money but you want to get it for your invention.

Yesterday your boyfriend called you and asked if you can get married now. He seemed so happy. You want to marry him and now you will have your father's money but you are very sad that you won't have the plans for your car. People will say that you only got the money by being lucky.

The First Information You Have

Fourth Grade Mystery Game

Akkad Technologies announced last week that they had invented a new kind of car that can drive itself. They kept the plans for this car on a large computer in their main office building.

On Tuesday, when the janitor opened the building, the computer was gone. No one had gone into the computer room on Monday. The last time that anyone saw the computer was Sunday.

The janitor and the president of the company, Kaitlin Akkad, are the only people that have keys to the building. You are the police. You have to figure out who stole the computer and get it back. The plans that are on that computer are worth 15 million dollars.

Think about what information you need to know to help you find the thief. Think about who, what, when, where, how questions.


You are going to talk to the first policeman who went to the building. Think about what you want to ask him

This Week's Words

This week we are working on a mystery game. The students will solve a crime. These are the words and meanings for this week.

o Alibi - Something that shows you did not do a crime
o Criminal - The person who did the crime
o Victim - The person who the crime was done to
o Guilty - You did it
o Innocent - You didn't do it
o Police
o Lawyer - The person who helps people in court
o Judge - The person who says if you are guilty or innocent
o Arrest - When the police come and take you
o Prison - The place the police put criminals
o Witness - Someone who sees a crime

Blog Updating Has Been Very Slow

I am sorry about that. It has been a busy week with the Water Fight, Open Day and many other things.

This week we are going to try something a little different. Its called a mystery game. Each day students get more information about a mystery. On Thursday there will be a test on that information. This game involves practicing all the skills we need. Some of the information is written, some can only be gathered by questioning witnesses, and the test itself will be a writing test.

Hopefully we will have a lot of fun. We will also be doing a lot of reading (as we always do), playing the question game, practicing using the different parts of the book (Index, Glossary, Table of Contents) and studying some science. We havent done science in a while so it will be a nice change.

Homework in 4A

To be eligible for an A in this class, students must complete 25 homework assignments by the end of the year.

Some students, Sarah A.G., Shahd, etc. have finished and can get As if they are good students. Some students have very few checks (the way we count homework) and need to finish the homework every night.

Spelling Test Grades

Great work on the spelling tests this week. A lot of As on some very hard words.

A+
Sarah A.G.
Omar
Fares
Malak
Selim
Amal
Na-El
Hassan

A
Shahd
Nassir

Half the students got As and more than a third scored perfectly. I am very happy with this. The students who are having trouble are trying to learn the words Wednesday night instead of studying 10-15 minutes every night. Some of these words were very hard to spell but the meanings were not that hard. If you didnt get an A last week, I expect you will this week.

Champions of the School

A Good Week

Its been a good week. Sorry the blog has not been updated more but it has also been very busy.

We did extensive reading practice with our new reading game, we made some headway into Spin F, and we did a lot of speaking practice. Next week the fourth issue of the newspaper should be ready.

Today there is a singing fight between, third, fourth and fifth grades. It should be fun.

This Week in Mr. Sean's Best Cheetah's Class

We are going to be starting Spin F. We completed Spin E. We will also be doing a lot of reading. (no surprise)

Some students will be finishing Fudge-a-Mania and most of the students will be working in book 2.2. This week's words all come from those stories. learn the spelling and learn the meanings.

We will be reading:

One Dark Night
Frogs
Red White and Blue
Cowboys

1. Pond - a small body of water. Frogs live in a pond.
2. Breeze - a soft wind
3. Clump - A group where the parts are touching each other
4. Warmth - Heat. When you stand in the Sun you feel warmth.
5. Slippery - Wet and hard to hold
6. Slimy - Slippery but disgusting too.
7. Protect - To stop something from getting hurt. Your mother protects you
8. Creature- Animal
9. Survive - stay alive
10. Embryo - In the first part of an Animal's life it is an embryo.
11. Yolk - the middle part of an egg
12. Wiggle - Shake
13. Gills - What fish use to breathe
14. Jaw - The bone that holds the teeth
15. Hind - Back
16. Vegetarians - Vegetarians dont eat meat.
17. Shed - To put off. Snakes shed their skin when they grow. You shed your jacket when it gets hot
18. Amphibian - Can live on land or water
19. Whole - In one piece
20. Length - How long something is
21.Lightning - The flash of light that comes sometimes when it is raining hard.
22. Thunder - The loud sound that goes with lightning
23. Stray - An animal with no owner
24. Gently - Softly
25. Bathrobe - What you wear when you get up to go to the bathroom in the morning. It is like a dress

King of the Road

Just a Girl

Some Songs For 4A

The Program I Recommended

Last week I recommended a program to help you with reading on the internet. I downloaded and used it without a problem, as did the parent who recommended it to me, but a student told me that a virus infected his computer from downloading it so if you choose to use it be very careful and make sure your computer is protected.

This Week

This week will be a little busy. As you know Ms. Fatima had to go back to South Africa because her father is sick.

On Thursday we will have a test but it will be a reading test. The only way to study for it is by doing the reading homework.

This is very important

I will not be accepting homework that is a mess. You must do your homework neatly, just like you would in class.

Spelling Test As

There were two parts to last week's spelling test. Spelling the words and knowing their meanings. These are the students who got As

Fares - A/A+
Karma - A
Hassan - A/A+
Malak - A+/A+ (Great Job Malak!)
Hamze - A
Shreem - A+/A
Omar A+/A+ (Great Job Omar!)
Selim - A/A+
Sarah A.G. A+/A+ (Great Job Sarah!)
Amal - A+/A
Na-El - A

Pillow Fight

This is a link to a free program that will put written English on the internet into spoken English. It can be a good way to aid your reading. Try it out but, as always, be careful when you download from the internet.


http://www.naturalreaders.com/free_version.htm

Progress Report

This week has been going well. Tonight's homework is the last story in 2.1 and we start 2.2 tomorrow. We expect to finish that book this year as well.

The top group will be taking a break from chapter books as they finish Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great and working in book 3.1.

Students have been brushing up on homophones (words that sound the same, like to, too, and two) and alphabetical order. Students all know alphabetical order but by drilling it we improve dictionary skills which are necessary because our reading is getting much more difficult

Keep an eye out for mandatory handwriting homework. All students won't have it but some will each night. We will also be working on the Stars Show this week. The Stars Show is the TV show for our class.

This Week's Words

These words are from the last two stories we are doing in book 2.1. You need to know spellings and meanings. They are very hard but if you study a little each day they should not be a problem. We will also work with them in class.

1. Blinking – Going off and on (power, lights)
2. Envelope – The thing you put letters in to mail them
3. Seoul – The capital of Korea
4. Korea – A country in Asia
5. Stamp – What you put on an envelope to pay for it
6. Smudge – When you rub ink from a marker, it smudges.
7. Gentle – Soft and easy. When you pick up a baby, be gentle
8. Pin – The sharp thing you use to put something on the wall
9. Faraway – not close
10. Slave – When one person owns another person. The person who is not free is a slave.
11. Kidnap – To steal a person
12. Saddle – The thing you use to sit on when you ride a horse
13. Neighbor – The person who lives next to you
14. Professor – A person who teaches at a university
15. Crops – Plants you grow for money

This Week's Reading

The Chapter Book Group is going to finish "Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great." The group working in the second 2.1 book will finish that book this week. They will start on 2.2.

This week's stories are:

Book 2.1
Dear Juno (page 350)
A Weed is a Flower (page 430)

Book 2.2
The Signmaker's Assistant
A Birthday Present for Tia

There will be homework four days this week so be ready for a lot of work.


The words for this week's test are from the last two stories in 2.1. I will post them later today

This Week's Tests

This week's test had three parts. The first was the spelling words from the blog. The second was identifying adverbs in sentences. The third part was reading.

Each part was graded separetely. Several students got 3 As. More students got 2 and some students got 1. The best test, and the only student who was perfect on all three parts was ..................Omar!!!!!!!!!!!!

Three As
Hassan
Montasser
Amal
Nasser
Selim

Two As
Malak
Shahd
Mohammed Shreem
Saad Titi
Sarah Abu Gosh

One A
Yusuf
Hamza
Nouraldeen
Na-El
Marwan
Fares

This Week

We have been practicing adjectives and adverbs

An adverb is a word that describes a verb. An adjective is a word that describes a noun.

We have a spelling test Thursday. Don't forget

Blog Only Spelling Words!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

This week there will be a spelling test on these words. This blog is the only place to find them.

1. during
2. after
3. always
4. never
5. well
6. hard
7. violently
8.slowly
9.quickly
10.without
11.delicious
12.sometimes
13.often
14.rarely
15.frequently

Reading and Rereading

This week we will do a lot of reading. Some students will be reading five chapters in "Otherwise Known as Sheila the Great"

Other students will be reading four stories in the 2.1 Scott Foresman book.

We have done some of these stories before but it will be valuable to us to do them again. The stories are:

Ronald Morgan Goes to Bat
Turtle's Race with Beaver
Animals Helping Animals
A Turkey for Thanksgiving

This week we are going to work on adjectives, adverbs, newspaper stories and "Just a Girl"

We will also start making videos to post on the blog

This is the first post for our new class.

This week we will choose a class name, a class song, a class mascot, and many other official class things.

We will establish class rules, a class government and many other things

More Updates to Come

Sorry the updates have been slow.

We are studying antonyms. letter writing and starting contractions this week. We are also continuing work on parts of speech, dramas, and punctuation.

This week is going well and the students are getting along very well with Mr. Tim.

This Week in 4B

We are studying letter writing. We are learning the parts of the letter and using this lesson to practice writing.

We are also welcoming Mr. Tim, who is going to be teaching our class sometimes. Of course I will still be there as well.

Mr. Tim is close friends with Mr. Jon, who taught many of the students last year. He is a very good man and we are very happy to have him.

We are also studying antonyms (opposites) and doing some more work with pronouns. Next week we will get back to learning new words.

Parents

In the new notebook the students have, the first page is for homework. When there is something on that page, the students have homework.

Look for it each night

Monday or Tuesday

Choose something in your home that you loved when you were a small boy or girl. Bring it to school Monday.

We are going to do a project with these things. Don't forget.

See you Monday

School Starts Soon

I have a big surprise for you when you get back. Here are your questions:

1. What do you think Mr. Sean will give you?
2. Where do you live?
3. Do you like your father or mother better?
4. How many people live in your home?
5. What games are you good at?
6. When will you finish school?
7. Did you go to school, two days ago?









1. I think Mr. Sean will give us ____________.
2. I live in Nablus.
3. I like my ________ more than my ___________.
4. ______ people live in my home.
5. I am good at __________, ___________, and __________.
6. I will finish school _____________.
7. No I didn't.

More Questions

1. How many arms do you have?
2. Where are your feet?
3. What time do you wake up?
4. Is your favorite teacher Mr. Sean?
5. When will you go back to school?
6. Why aren't you in school today?
7. Do you watch TV before you go to bed?








1. I have two arms.
2. My feet are at the end of my legs.
3. I wake up at ________.
4. Yes he is.
5. I will go back to school next Sunday.
6. I am not in school because there is no school.
7. Yes I do.

Questions to Practice

1. Where did you learn to understand English?
2. Where did your mom live when she was a baby?
3. How many sisters does your father have?
4. Why did you check the blog today?
5. How many questions have you answered today?
6. Who is your favorite teacher?
7. When did you stop going to school?













1. I learned to understand English at school.
2. My mom lived in ________ when she was a baby.
3. My father has ______ sisters.
4. I checked the blog yesterday to ________________.
5. I have answered five questions today.
6. My favorite teacher is ____________.
7. I stopped going to school _______ days ago.

Questions to Practice

1. Where were you nine days ago?
2. Where will you be in nine days?
3. How many days have you been at home?
4. When did you meet Mr. Sean?
5. How many years will it take before you are 21?
6. Are you going to be happy when you come back to school?
7. Who is the slowest girl in class?















1. Nine days ago, I was in school.
2. I will be in school.
3. I have been at home for _______ days.
4. I met Mr. Sean in August.
5. It will take 10 years before I am 21.
6. Yes I am.
7. The slowest girl in the class is Zeina.

Questions to Practice

1. Where are you right now?
2. Who is the tallest teacher in the school?
3. Ten years ago, were you alive?
4. How many times did you go to school last week?
5. Where did you play football against Ms.Fatima's class?
6. What are you going to do this week?







1. I am at home.
2. The tallest teacher is Mr. Ameed.
3. No I wasn't or Yes I was.
4. I went to school ______ times last week.
5. I played football against Ms. Fatima's class on the playground.
6. This week I am going to ___________.

The Semester That Just Ended

Was very successful for 4B. Today we received the first fourth grade newsletter. It included stories written in whole or in part by many of our students.

Dania
Zakariya
Ahmed M.
Ahmed H.
Ahmed Q.

and several other students worked on stories for the newspaper. We are going to continue producing the newspaper around once a month.

Great work for everyone and I'll see you next semester.

Today's Class

Today, Sunday, the class was excellent. The students started strong and we easily finished the material in Spin. The top group did well with "The Duck" and the 1.5 group was better with "Abbie Burgess" than I expected.

The drama went well.

Tomorrow more work with the stories, we are going to write a story about Anan, and in our visit with Ms. Fatima, we are going to review the rooms of the house and which furniture and other things go in which rooms. Most of the students should have had this before so we won't belabor it

Specifically:

Stove
Toilet
Couch
Bed
Shower
Sink
TV

Living room
Dining room
Kitchen
Bathroom
Bedroom

This Week in 4B

We are going to be doing some more work in our Spin books. Starting with pages 54-55, we are going to work on using "used to." We will also be working on a new drama that mixes the different past tense forms we know.

This week the 2.1 group will work on "The Duck" and the 1.5 group will work on "Abbie Burgess." A lot of students will work on both because "The Duck" is one of the easier 2.1s and "Abbie" is one of the harder 1.5s. Depending on how the students do on these we may get to a second story in each book by Wednesday. That would be "The Bravest Cat" in 1.5 and either "Eye Spy" or "Furry Mouse" in 2.1.

We are also continuing to work on writing and the newspaper will finally be out this week. Sorry for the delay but my laptop problems have slowed production.

Should be a fun week.

This Year in 4B

I have been writing the students' grade paragraphs this week and I realized how much this class has changed in the past four months. It is always hard to bring new students into our school because they usually don't have enough English to keep up.

At the start of the year this was a big problem. Many of our new students couldn't keep up with the lessons, couldn't use sentences to answer questions and understood very little. When we started with Spin D, there were only six students in the class that could do it without a lot of help. All of these students were with us last year.

I am happy to say that this week when we returned to Spin D for the first time in around a month, almost all the students were able to complete the work independently. We have finishe four pages and I expect to get through more next week.

While I was writing the grades I realized how much some students had improved. Looking at the work they did in September and the work they are doing now is amazing. You should be very proud of your children and how hard they have worked.

I wanted to mentin several students specially.

Ahmed Hejawi, Ahmed Quaraish, Maria, and Miqdam have all made great strides this year. Ahmed Q. might be the top student in the class now. He always works hard, his speech is improving and his writing is much better. Ahmed H. has improved in every area as much as any student in the class.

Miqdam is the most improved student in speech and in singing. He is always excited to participate and he has come so far this year. Maria studies as effectively as any student in the class. She always does well on material that we have covered and she has also made great strides this year.

These aren't the only students whose progress I am very happy with but I wanted to take time to honor them because of how much hard work they do in class and out.

This Week in 4B

This will be a light week in 4B. Very little homework, not much new material, and nothing too difficult. The students are preparing for Arabic finals and that should provide enough stress.

Today we worked on a drama intended to refresh the students on the proper use of but. We also did some work on consonant blends that end words.

Tomorrow we will get started with should and that will include the long awaited return of the Spin D book.

We will also finish working with the Dinosaur Babies story in 1.5 and the Ugly Duckling in 2.1. Should be a fun and interesting week.