Happy Strawberry Festival Day!

The kids are pretty excited today about the Strawberry Festival...but we're keeping it real here in the classroom...

We are finishing up our novel units...the Literature Circles have been fantastic and now the kids are choosing from a novel menu to do a "final product" for the novel they read.  Some kids have finished that "final product" and have chosen to read one of the novels they didn't get to read the first time.  Soon, we are headed into two different units in Language Arts that will finish up the year...Plays and Functional Documents.  The kids will be learning about all of the important elements of a play and then they will put on their own plays...more info on this to come!  The Functional Documents unit helps the kids see the importance of different types of informational text, how to use it, and what text features are beneficial for comprehension. 

We are also finishing up a fun Science unit...we spent most of this week discussing fossils, reading about fossils, and watching video clips about fossils...the kids even MADE fossils...thank you, Mrs. Humerick!! They are bringing their fossils home today.  Ask them if it is an impring, mold, or cast fossil and if they know the difference (hopefully they do!!) 

In Math this week we have been focusing on number operations...specifically multiplication and problem solving.  I have tried to help each student work at his/her own pace in this unit.  We have lots of students in different phases of learning the algorithms involved with multi-digit multiplication...but all of the students need to have mastered multiplication by one digit at this point!  It is even more important that the kids are able to use the multiplication algorithm when solving word problems.  This is not as easy for some as others.  We will continue this next week and bring in division.  Also this week we worked with prime and composite numbers. 

I have a MILLION papers to grade...that is definitely the place that "work to contract" is affecting.  I will continue to do a few sets at a time and send them when I can...but don't hold your breath...and please bear with me.  I am most excited to read the narratives, but they take the most amount of time!!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend with your families...this is the first Strawberry Festival I will miss (I will be out of town)...but my husband and kids will be there, so if you see them, make sure to say hi!