Week in Review Nov. 15th-19th

ELOQUENCE DAY
The $5 for Eloquence Day was due today. There many students who still need to turn this in. I sent home a reminder note today as well. If you want to volunteer, you will also need to send in the tan sheet.

THANKSGIVING BREAK:
Don't forget that there is no school from Thursday Nov. 25 - Tuesday Nov. 30!

Writing: Students have finished their Biographies. I will have them graded and returned next week. Monday each person used the internet to research a different Native American tribe. Now that we have our information, I have been discussing and modeling writing topic sentences with appropriate details, using varied sentences structure, and writing inviting introductions.

Reading: The class completed their book report projects. Each student had to decide on the 6 most important events that would give the "gist" of their novel. This is a difficult concept, particularly with novels. We have practiced using picture books and will continue to work on this skill. We also have been working with non-fiction in our Comprehension Toolkit to review and strengthen comprehension strategies.

Math: I am very proud of my class and their hard work in math. They all did very well on the chapter 3 test covering division! They are choosing to slow down and check work over. We began chapter 4 which also covers division. This week we have learned to divide by multiples of 10 and began dividing by 2-digit divisors. This requires kids to learn strategies to help them decide how many times a 2 digit number can be divided into larger numbers. This concept can be difficult at first. They seemed to enjoy the challenge today!

Science: We have begun our new unit, Forces and Motion. This is a long but very fun unit. We will be arm wrestling, designing a roller coaster, playing tug-of-war, and designing and testing paper airplanes just to name a few activities- and ten I have to be remind them that there is a point to all this fun!
  This week we have been designing a system to cause a marble to go as sow as it can down a slanted table. We talked about friction, speed, direction, obstacles, gravity, and forces. Students made revisions and we tested today again.