Our Week In Review

It seemed for a minute that summer had returned this week!  We were lucky enough to enjoy the warm weather while we made our terrariums in science.  As most of you saw last night at Open House, we have created a mini ecosystem which clearly demonstrates the Water Cycle. Your child will be able to clearly explain what is happening in his/her terrarium.  We will observe these terrariums throughout the year, and your child will bring it home toward the end of the school year.  I'm sure you will be impressed with the results!

In math this week, we continued to work on strategies for solving multiplication problems.  We have also been working on strategies to solve word problems, and how to explain our mathematical thinking.  We have been talking about some new math vocabulary words. Students should be fluent using the following words:

• factor
• multiple
• product
• prime number
• composite number

We will be having a quiz next week on the topics we have been learning in math during this unit.  

In Writing we have been "trying on" a variety of topics with our "quick writes". Your child can tell you all of the topics we have been discussing.  Next week we will choose one of the topics and draft that topic.  I'm excited to see where these stories will go!

We began our first Interactive Read Aloud this week.  We will be reading The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate.  This book won the Newbery Award in 2012, and you can find some information about this book here.

The main character in this book is a silverback gorilla named Ivan.  As part of this thematic unit, we will be working on our observation skills by watching real gorillas through "gorillacams".  We have started discussing the difference between scientific, factual observations and observations with feeling, such as "The baby gorilla is cute."  We will be using the camera from the National Zoo and the San Diego Zoo. I have posted the links to the cameras on the right under important links, and have also posted the links below.



San Diego "Ape Cam"

National Zoo "Gorilla Cam" (This camera is not currently working, however, I hope it will be up and running soon).

We have also started to learn how to create Power Point Presentations during our technology time on Fridays.  We will be creating presentations about this book.  The students (and their teachers) are very excited about this unit!!!

We had our Puff Mobile Race this week as well. Mrs. Merten was very impressed with how well we followed the engineering process, as well as how well we were able to work together in a group.  Our Puff Mobiles all moved, and the races were pretty close!

And the big news?  Our class won the "GOLDEN BROOM" award for leaving our classroom neatly at the end of the day.  Mr. Rousseau and Mr. Howe said we are the "MOST IMPROVED".