Our Week In Review

This week, we have continued to learn division in math.  Students are becoming more automatic with math facts, and division is feeling easier to them.  We have moved our assessment to Wednesday next week.  The students are ready! A study guide was sent home this week.

We finished reading Little Dog Lost this week. The students LOVED this book, and were fully engrossed in it at the end.  Mrs. Greene commented on how impressed she was with our attention to this.  Most of our class rated this book a 10!  (Many will now be asking parents for dogs, too.).  Next week we will focus on non-fiction reading, and looking closely at text.  We will be reading books about dogs.  On Wednesday we will have a "Little Dog Lost Day".  We will play charades with words from the book and do some fun activities.  Students are invited to bring a stuffed animal to school to sit on desks (it must fit on the desk) and to bring a creative snack (something that relates to the book) to school.

We are working on our fiction stories, and they are fantastic!  The children have really embraced this genre.


We have been working on learning about Canada during Social Studies. We will have our assessment next week.

The highlight of our week was today. We participated in an educational BREAKOUT.  The children had to solve mathematical clues and work together in order to gather keys and codes to unlock various boxes.  Students had 45 minutes to "breakout" and both teams were able to do this! There were 9 students in a team.  The students worked really well together, and had a great time, too!

SUCCESS!

Our Week In Review

Mathematics
This week during Math we began to learn a new concept- DIVISION.  Though it seemed scary at first, we are doing well.  As you may have noticed, this division is VERY different from how many adults learned.  The method we are using for division is "Low - Stress" Division (also called Partial Quotients).  You can find a few videos demonstrating this on our blog, and by clicking here.  We are working on making other videos to help with this skill during Technology Workshop.  We have been taking this slow, so that the children can master one step at a time.  Of course, knowing multiplication and division facts automatically will help your child with this process. You may have noticed that math fact practice is now part of our regular homework!   Our division assessment is tentatively scheduled for December 17th.
Reading/Writing

We have been reading Little Dog Lost by Marion Dane Bauer. This book is written in poetry form, and it about a boy who longs for a dog, and about a dog who needs an owner.  We are discussing theme and author's craft during this interactive read aloud.  Children are starting to look for similes and personification in their own reading as well.  During Writer's Workshop, the children are planning for writing fiction stories.  This is a wonderful connection to our reading, as we are really "reading like writers" and "writing like readers". This simply  means that we are looking at our books and trying to analyze the author's craft- finding things we can include in our writing.  We also look at our writing and consider if it is interesting enough for someone to read.

Science
We have started our unit about Weather.  This unit will be broken down into smaller units in order to be more manageable for the students.  We have started with Earth's atmosphere and forecasting the weather.  There will be an open notes quiz prior to the December break.

Social Studies
We have started our study of Canada. At this time we have learned about the varied climates in Canada, and where Canada is in relation to the United States.  We will continue this unit, learning about Natural Resources/Economy, Natives in Canada (First Nations) and the history of Canada.  We have an assessment scheduled for 12/18.

Poetry/Technology Workshop
During Poetry Workshop, we have started to learn about author Robert Louis Stevenson.  Students are writing holiday couplets during the month of December. During Tech, we have been working on creating videos to either explain a difficult math concept or to recommend a book to someone. The children are VERY excited about this and can share what they are working on with you!

DANCE PARTY FRIDAY WAS AWESOME THIS WEEK!

Division Practice- Homework Help!