Week of January 7

This week's weather and schedule were both a little unsettled.  On Monday we enjoyed a wonderful welcoming assembly with our Japanese exchange students.

 Mrs. Conley bought some new Big Joe bean chairs for the reading corner. They are super comfy. We share them using the old fashioned 'alphabet by the last name rule' as well as there is one for girls and one for boys rule. :)

We have some new novels as well. Out of Left Field by Ellen Klages is about Katy Gordon Every boy in the neighborhood knows Katy Gordon is their best pitcher, even though she's a girl. But when she tries out for Little League, it's a whole different story. Girls are not eligible, period. It is a boy's game and always has been. It's not fair, and Katy's going to fight back. Inspired by what she's learning about civil rights in school, she sets out to prove that she's not the only girl who plays baseball. With the help of friendly librarians and some tenacious research skills, Katy discovers the forgotten history of female ball players. Why does no one know about them? Where are they now? And how can one ten-year-old change people’s minds about what girls can do? ; Class Action by Steven B. Frank, is a laugh-out-loud story about family, friendship, integrity and navigating differences. The Unflushables by Ron Bates is about a 13-year-old named Sully who tries to make it safe for all to flush again. It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it! It is fast-paced and very funny. They are already in the hands of eager readers.

In language arts we filled in our graphic organizers for our persuasive essays and we hi-lited and discussed the important parts of essays with partners.  Students worked on their second vocabulary word page.  We will begin typing our middle paragraphs on Monday. 

In our class read aloud the main character, Annabelle, is threatened by Betty.  Annabelle decides that her mother already has enough battles to fight running a farm and taking care of three generations so she decides to handle the situation alone. We will begin charting and discussing the many different characteristic traits of the main characters. We had fun playing a Kahoot that reviewed important pieces from the first five chapters.

In science this week we learned to draw like a scientist by looking carefully and paying attention to the small details.  We learned that specific feedback is the most helpful.  We also finished learning about the six different biomes.  Soon each student will choose a biome to further research.  Our bugs came this week, but we won't be able to observe them until next week.  We will study the darkling beetle and the isopod.



We are learning the different ways of interpreting a division problem.  For example 12 ÷ 4  can be thought of as what number times 4 is 12, how many groups of 4 can be made from 12, how many in each group if I make 4 groups with 12, or what is 1/4 of 12.  Just as multiplication can be thought of as repeated addition, division can be thought of as repeated subtraction.  Partial quotient division asks children to use their number sense as they repeatedly subtract multiples of the divisor from the dividend.  With this method, students  continue to develop their understanding of the concept of division and their number sense.  


Conversation starters:
Aptitude
Toby
Betty
Austin's Butterfly
Biome
Dividend, divisor, quotient