Happy Friday!

We had a great week...can you believe it's December?!

Language Arts
Most of the kids have finished organizing their facts about their president or first lady. They have moved them from their learning laptop onto a giant sized web. Some students have begun taking that information and organizing it into a well written biography...about themselves! They will be taking on the persona of their very important person for our Hall of Presidents and First Ladies, so they are writing the biography from "their point of view." Next week they will meet with peers to find necessary revisions and then conference with me to make sure they are ready to publish. This will all be done while we jump into our next Language Arts unit, Poetry. I LOVE poetry and think the winter is a wonderful time for writing poetry! We will be exploring all of the elements of poetry and reading and writing many different types of poems.

Social Studies
The unit Peoples of the Nation and World is what we are headed into as we wrap up the Political Science unit. And, no, you were not having a nightmare...your children really DO have a project to do this month...but it's not labor intensive, and you'll actually enjoy the conversations that will occur as a result of this project! This project is due on Friday, December 19th. The description and rubric are coming home today...please look the over the project this weekend and discuss it with your child. We are happy to provide 18x24" construction paper for the kids to use. I will be sending this next week. If you and your child decide that you would prefer to use something other than construction paper, that is perfectly acceptable. This project requires conversations with family members, but otherwise, should be completed independently.

Math
The kids took a multiplication pretest this week and will begin some group work next week...there are so many different objectives in this unit, and each child has different needs, so we'll be changing the groupings quite a bit during this unit. This past week we worked with the math vocabulary: numeric expression and numeric equation...just to be clear...the equation has the operation and the answer...the expression only shows the operation.

EXPRESSION
3 x 5

EQUATION
3 x 5 = 15

We did an activity with rolling number cubes and creating multiplication arrays while using this math vocabulary.

We also worked with the words: factors, multiples, and product. The kids were asked to solve a word problem and explain their thinking, making sure to include proper math vocabulary in their explanation. They did a fantastic job. I'm holding onto those papers for their portfolios...but you'll see others over the next couple of weeks.

I think that's about it...I know it's a busy time of year...my weekend consists of two basketball games, a dance recital, getting our Christmas tree, grading papers...and oh yeah...trying to regain control of my house...well, we know which one of those I won't get to again, don't we?!!

Have a great weekend!