Our field trip to the Grand Rapids Symphony and the Van Andel Museum was fun and cold! Thank you to the parents and grandparents for coming along with us and braving the walks to the bus, etc in the cold weather. I also sent a thank you to our bus drivers for getting us back to school safely in some yucky weather that afternoon.

Homework: Page 109 in the workbook- all.
  

For all:  Reading: Read every day.

  

For some: Delta Math Review-  (This weekend some students may not have the packet at home as they were to get it returned on Friday.)

Several students brought home a packet to review concepts they need to continue to practice at home and school. These are to be turned in to me on Monday for a check in. There was a note attached to the front about them not having to be completed, just show that some work has been done.
 
  For all:  February Book Project- Focus on Character (DUE MARCH 3)  

  We went over this again on Friday. Students know:

- They should done with their books. 

- If they are completing the assignment at home on their own technology, it 

    should be emailed to me by Tuesday morning.

- If anyone needs time on Monday to use a computer, the entire assignment should be written out and ready to just be typed in.

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March Book Project: Create a book jacket for your book.

I went through the March assignment and handed out directions for this on Friday. 

I will attach it and copy it to this blog page. The due date is on the assignment page - March 30. Monday we will go to the library in case anyone needs to choose a book.

 
MATH:  
 There are tutorials for division and some practice in order of the concept to be taught. 

  We continue working in our Division unit. This includes dividing whole numbers, decimals, and powers of 10 and problem-solving. Although many students were not taught long division in 4th grade, we have been practicing since early in the school year with single digit divisors. We are already into 2-digit divisors. We have spent a lot of time this week using various problem-solving strategies. Some answers require, rounding up, some using the divisor and remainder as a fraction or decimal, and sometimes the answer is the remainder. We also began learning to divide when there is a decimal in the dividend.
 
READING: We continue in the genre unit reading Sign of the Beaver. It revolves around the theme of facing challenges. We have been reading as a class and in pairs to discuss this novel. Students are working on comprehension and strategies, quoting from  and paraphrasing text, and using text clues to respond to questions and find meaning of unknown vocabulary. Our read aloud is Echohawk and relates to social studies and the genre unit book. 

  Each week we are taking one day off of this novel and focusing on nonfiction. This week we read, "The History of Yum" about the Hershey company's history and about Recees's Pieces history.  

WRITING:   Students compared and contrasted the two articles on a graphic organizer and will write a short compare/contrast piece on Monday. Students completed their version of the book "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" focusing on how commas and apostrophes can change meaning. We will share these on Monday.

                                                                                                                                       

SCIENCE: 

  Students are working in their groups to research and report on a planet or dwarf planet. Groups were given a page for notes and we discussed standards that will be assessed. They have the choice of creating a poster, google presentation, or Prezi. If they have another idea they may ask.

   

Spelling  Students took Spelling Test 20 on Friday. Next week's lesson is about the homophones "there, their, and they're". 

We will continue to learn about comma rules, have more lessons on using quotation marks, and continue to learn about and use figurative language.
    

Here is what the assignment for the March Book Project looks like:

 

MARCH BOOK PROJECT  -  Create Book Jacket!

DUE: Monday, March 30

For your March book project, use your creativity and knowledge of your book to design a fantastic, wonderful, unique book cover for your novel.

You will choose a chapter book and create a book jacket. I will provide a template for the book jacket. Look at the cover of some of your favorite books to get an idea of the format.

BOOK COVER PROJECT

You will need to include:

FRONT COVER:

___ Title - large & bold

___ An illustration (This should be appealing)

___ Author (This should be smaller than the title and at the bottom) 

BACK COVER:

                    ___ An intriguing summary (BLURB) of the book.            

SPINE:

          ___The title and author’s name.

INSIDE FRONT FLAP:

                   ___ A description of the main character.

BACK FLAP:

___ A favorite part

EFFORT:

___ Spelling, neatness, punctuation are important! It should look like

       you spent time on it.