Hi Everyone,
This week went by so fast! At the end of the day, with a million holiday-related things on my mind, I walked out the door a little earlier than usual. I went off shopping, and about an hour ago, I realized I had never written my blog post for the week! I apologize for being so late, and for all of the typos I found (and then fixed) in last week's blog. I guess we are all a little busy right now!
It has certainly been a busy week. The classroom is abuzz with excitement, and it has been hard to get all 22 students to sit, listen, and stay engaged. I know their minds are elsewhere, so I have tried to keep the new learning to a minimum. Instead, we have done a lot of reviewing and finishing up. We have completed our expert books! On Monday, we will have our on-demand assessment for nonfiction writing. I told the students this today because I like them to have some time to plan and pick a topic. If you have a moment, talk to your children about this and help them nail down a topic so they are ready for Monday. It should be a topic they know a lot about so they can write like experts! I am hoping to see some wonderful organization in their writing!
We are also more or less finished with our nonfiction writing unit. Today the students got together with their research groups and taught each other what they have learned about various extreme weather events. They learned a lot during their research -- and I don't mean just facts. They learned how to research across multiple texts, how to tackle the really hard parts of the books they were using, and how to come up with some ideas about their topics. I am impressed with them!
We took a brief dive into our energy unit this week during science. We played with "roller coasters" and marbles and learned about potential energy and hills. We will come back to this after break -- mostly learning about how humans use various natural resources to make energy in the form of electricity.
Math is the only subject that we kept on with this past week. After learning how to use the US algorithm for addition and subtraction with numbers up to 1,000, we were ready to move onto much larger numbers! We made a 10,000 chart in our classroom, and we learned a lot about place value and how to move around in our number system. These are BIG numbers and they are hard for many students to conceptualize, much less add and subtract! But that is exactly what we did this week. We practiced using the traditional algorithm to solve problems such as 23,145 - 16,848. We also learned to really think about every equation and to decide if the algorithm was the best strategy. We can solve 25,000 - 4,500 in our heads FAR more easily than with an algorithm, All those zeroes and all that regrouping (or borrowing) is a lot harder than using our knowledge of numbers and our mental math skills! We will finish up this unit before the break, but of course we will keep adding and subtracting -- forever!
Thank you to all off you who have sent in crafting supplies. I know the students are looking forward to our Maker's Space next week. It will be nice to take a brief break from the usual academic pressure and have a little creative fun!
I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Think SNOW!
