Happy Thanksgiving

This week we attended a fantastic presentation from Mrs. Silvia of the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University.  Mrs. Silvia will be at Kennedy 4 times this year as our "Anthropologist in Residence". She will share her wealth of knowledge about several Native American Tribes. This week's presentation was about the Natives of the Northeast (specifically New England).  As always, we are grateful to our PCC for funding such wonderful events.  The children really benefit educationally from hearing about these topics from experts.

The NE Natives were hunters and gatherers.

A stone axe made from a sapling, a stone and sinew.

A demonstration of the "Three Sisters" plants (corn, beans, and squash).

David using a fire starter

Grinding Corn into flour was traditionally a girls' job.

But..... we had everyone give it a try!

This was a traditional bow used by the Natives of the NE.

The Natives used the deer skin to keep warm.

This gardening tool was made from a sapling, sinew, and a deer shoulder bone.

This is traditional Native American clothing worn by women of the Northeast.

This is what boys from the NE tribes would have worn.

Today we gave our Thanksgiving Speeches.  I offered to video tape all speeches for the blog.  We had 4 students agree to be taped!  Below you will see pictures from the speeches, as well as the videos of those brave few!

From the Teacher's Desk

Dear Parents,

        This is the season of giving thanks!  I want to take a minute to thank you for your support of our school activities.  Thank you for all of your generous donations for the class store! I am also so grateful for the Wishing Well donations.  I will be purchasing a lot of new books for our classroom with the Barnes and Noble gift cards. All of these donations of supplies, time and energies are all greatly appreciated!

        Mostly, I would like to thank you for your support with your children.  The consistency and help you give them daily supports what we do in school, and allows the children to understand the importance of our connection.  I feel lucky to have such a wonderful group of families.

       I hope you have a wonderful long weekend and enjoy the company of family and friends. Happy Thanksgiving.

Warmly,

Katie Merten

Our Week In Review

This week we began writing "Partner Poems".  We worked with the students from Mrs. Williams' class to write Cinquains about a character or part of our read aloud, Mr. Popper's Penguins. We will revise and edit these poems next week.

Later in the week, we wrapped up our multiplication unit with some review, and then a test today.  Most of the children did very well on the assessment. Some students are still making errors with addition and multiplication facts.  I have encouraged them to keep practicing!  Please support this effort with your child.

math centers

Black and White Day

Today we celebrated the end of our first Interactive Read Aloud, Mr. Popper's Penguins.  Black and White day was a big success.  We began the day creating Antarctic artwork using black construction paper and chalk.  After the artwork, we took a break from the Black and  White activities to take our math test.  Then we enjoyed our Black and White snacks while watching March of the Penguins.  In art, we were able to create Black and White Collages (thanks Mrs. Hess!). 

Antarctic Art

After art, we played a modified version of Pictionary with Mrs. Williams' class.  We enjoyed the friendly competition of drawing some vocabulary words from our book.  Though Mrs. Williams' class guessed more words, we did enjoy this game!

Later, we took a test about our book, Mr. Popper's Penguins.  Mrs. Merten will correct these, and we will glue them into our interactive read aloud journals. Look for these journals to come home in the coming week or two, so that families can see their child's reading progress. Please remember to return the journal the next day because we will continue to use it for our next story.


Finally today, we got to look at some pictures of ancestors of the students in our class. We were surprised to see so many inherited traits in our friends! 

Happy Diwali!

Priya dressed for her Diwali Celebration

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.

Multiplication Method

We have been learning about multiplying using a new algorithm.  Below is a video example to help your child with homework and studying over the next few weeks.

Student Council

Today our student council candidates each gave a speech explaining why we should vote for them.  Everyone did a great job!  We will have a tough decision to make!  Our class will vote for our student council representative on Wednesday!  Below are our candidates~

In other news, all Kennedy students voted for president today.  It was a close election!  President Barack Obama won with 247 votes.  Governor Mitt Romney received 196 votes.