Welcome to a Thursday blog! I am not going to be here tomorrow, so I thought I should check in briefly before I go out of town. It feels like it's been another short week, especially since Wednesday was an early dismissal day. But we have been busy!

In math this week, we tackled adding and subtracting fractions with like denominators. This was relatively easy! We also worked on regrouping fractions for subtraction, and that was hard! The objective here is for students to understand that they can turn a whole number into fractions with the same numerator and denominator -- that's a kind of regrouping!  The photo below shows what I mean.

This will take some practice, but I know we will all get there!  We also began adding decimals this week, and will do more of that next week before getting into multiplication with fractions and whole numbers.

In writing, we are starting the "idea gathering" for our literary essays. Students are reading a variety of high level picture books and coming up with ideas about the characters and the themes. Next week they will each craft a thesis and get busy writing their essays.

We have started our historical fiction book clubs. The class is learning about how to notice the mood of the books (there is always trouble brewing!) and how to tack the "who, what, when, and where" onto their mental bulletin boards. Next week we will learn about double timelines and how they help us with comprehension.

In science, we are learning about renewable and nonrenewable natural resources, fossil fuels, and  how humans use them for energy. We are learning about which things we use take the most electricity, and how each energy source has its pros and cons. 

Tomorrow is NAEP testing for most of my class. You all received a letter about this about a month ago, and I reminded the students about it yesterday. All I can ask is for them to do their best and not put any pressure on themselves. We don't get to choose whether or not JES gets tagged for NAEP testing.... so here we are!  Those students who aren't testing will spend time in the classroom with some  review work while their peers take the test in other parts of the school.  If you have questions about this, contact the office (since I will be away tomorrow.)

Thank you for signing up for conferences. I have sent out links for next week's conferences (if you didn't ask for an in-person conference.) If you did ask for in-person, you did not receive a link and you should assume that your in-person conference time is on my schedule. If you received a link from me for a virtual conference but would rather meet in-person, that is also fine. Just let me know!  I will send out links for the week off 3/21 sometime next week.

I look forward to Monday when masks become optional. We discussed this as a class, and I think we are all ready to respect each family's choice and to be kind and caring about masks/no masks. I know it will be an adjustment, but it is a happy one!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. I hope NOT to be driving in the storm!  Stay safe, and happy snowstorm!