Our Week in Review

Even though it was a short week, it was busy one!  We began the week with a school wide vote for the President of the US.  Kennedy school elected Barrack Obama, just as our country did.  The children had Tuesday off from school.  On Wednesday, we elected our student council representative.  Congratulations to David!

In reading we have been learning about characters and what their actions tell us about their personalities.  We also have been asking "talkworthy questions".  We have been reading Mr. Popper's Penguins as an interactive read aloud, and the children are practicing these strategies in their independent reading. This week, we were lucky enough to have Mr. Whitmore here to discuss his trip to Antarctica.  He showed us some pictures of the land and animals there.  What a nice way to make a text to world connection!  Below are some pictures of his presentation and the penguin quiz!

Thanks Mr. Whitmore!!!

 The Penguin Quiz

Open publication - Free publishing - More antarctica

In math we have been working hard to understand the concepts behind multiplication.  We began by using the area model for multiplication, using base ten blocks.  Here is Dominic demonstrating using the area model.

We quickly moved from that to drawing this model, and finally to using "window boxes".  Here is Mae demonstrating using the window boxes.

We began this morning playing a game called Multiplication Wrestling, and we will formally learn the Partial Products method of multiplication next week.  Mrs. Merten is very proud of the hard work we have done!

Multiplication Wrestling

In Social Studies we began our study of Mexico, and learned about the Mexican Flag.
We will continue our study of Mexico in the coming weeks.