Weekly Update 11/22/13

This week went by so quickly!  Thank you so much to everyone who made it to math morning!  We had a great turn out and the students were so happy to teach you how to play the games.  They are working so hard on their math skills and it's great to see them excited to share with you!
Important information:
Tomorrow, Friday, November 22 is an all school pajama day run by the student council.  
Wednesday, the 27th, is an early release day with dismissal at 12:00.  
There is no school on Thursday, the 28th, or Friday, the 29th.  
There will be no reading response next week as it's a very short week.  
In literacy this week, we've started focusing on non-fiction books, their features and purposes.  It's been great to change to non-fiction and focus on real life topics that the students really enjoy.  We've read about butterflies, the Earth, Martin Luther King Jr, and the rain forest.  We've been using sticky notes to keep track of our thinking during reading time.  Students might use a sticky note to show something they learned, a question they still have, or an important fact.  We will continue with non-fiction for the next few weeks.  In writing workshop, we've switched from narrative writing to more creative writing.  We've wrote about who in the whole world we would invite for dinner, if we could have any balloon in the Macy's parade which one it would be, and tomorrow we're going to write about how to catch a plum turkey!  It's great to see their creative sides and imagination come out!
In math, we're still focusing on place value but working on addition and subtraction strategies as well.  We will continue this next week as we focus more on story problems and the steps to explain their mathematical thinking.
In science, we've started the Earth, Sun, and Moon unit and so far the students love it!  We've been using our background knowledge to share what we think we already know about the sun and then asking questions that we want answers too.  We're also sharing our line of learning.  This is when we write our thoughts and then underneath write something we learned from a peer.  This helps create conversations and sharing of ideas around science topics.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday mini-break and enjoys time with family and friends.
Mrs. DeKing