Happy Thanksgiving!

         Greetings and Happy Thanksgiving!  Of course it is now the day after the big T-Day, but the memory lives on, right?  So here we are smack dab in the middle of the holiday season.  Amazing to me to have already seen Christmas decorations even two weeks ago in some places.  Doesn't everyone know we have school to do?  Speaking of which,  hope your break is going well.  Here are a few things we have been doing in class. 
         We have completed our Lit Circles about finding conflict (like that is very hard anymore), the students did a fantastic job on their brief presentations, and we will be starting a new Lit Circle this week.  We are going to focus on non-fiction information and ideas.  More to come on that this week coming up. 
         We have been working on spelling two times a week using the Spellography series as our guide.  Students will be working with word patterns and reviewing many different spellings of the many sounds we use in our language over the course of this year.  While we will not have weekly spelling tests, there will be written check-ins along the way for the different spelling patterns.  We have been writing about Our Special Place in Writing class, and the students have been doing very well regarding this topic.  I have also set up Google Accounts specific to our school for their writing to be filed.  They will be able to access this from any computer in the school with their username and password. 
          The Fourth Grade Mathematicians has been working on multiplication and division using multiple towers.  We are working with multiples of tens to increase our efficiency of multiplying and dividing.  I hope to move this unit along as some of the concepts are similar to our first unit this year and build on these.   One thing that is very important is for your child to continue to work on their multiplication combinations fluency.  This remains very important!  Also, please check in with Karen for information on the 5th Grade Mathematicians. 

          Social Studies class continues to include Thai culture and activities, mapping and civilization studies, and soon we will be doing a unit on an indigenous people, the Taino.

   Our studies in Science will begin to wrap up the Biomes and Ecosystems unit.  Students have been busy exploring the differences between the different biomes that we are covering, working in cooperative groups and preparing posters and information charts with their assigned biomes. We also had our Four Winds program last week.  Some fun times with cones and the Fibbonacci principle.  Check out some of the pictures!

          So, that probably is a good overview of our work over the last two weeks or so. As always, it is a pleasure to work with your children and I enjoyed the conference times we have had.  Still a fe more to get in there as well.  

Thanks from us,  Mr. B and Ms Deb.

Greetings from 4/5 B again!
      At the present time, we are currently in between Halloween and Thanksgiving break.  We are also ending our first Literature Circle this coming Tuesday.  As I may have mentioned in a previous post, our Lit Circle focused on "conflict" in the main character or "protagonist".  As the students read their assigned pages, they looked for examples of conflicts in their chosen books.  We then discussed these and other topics in our small groups during the 3 weeks we did this.  The final project is to do a "Reader's Theater" in which the students read selections from their stories to all the lit circle group.  Their selections, in this case, illustrate the conflicts seen in those particular selections.
     Our Writing sessions these past two weeks have been about "special places".  We started with choosing a special place that means something to the students, then choose three "special moments" that occurred in that special place.  From there each student has to create an idea map which allows them to organize all the pieces they remember about that moment.  They will then start the actual writing process involving sentences, paragraphing, and proofreading.  We continue with these pieces next week.  We are also working on basic spelling patterns twice a week in groupings according to what needs to be learned.
     4th grade math class has completed the Data Unit, did the final unit assessment, and will move into Unit 3:  Multiplication and Division 2.  We will investigate methods beyond the typical algorithm for double digit multiplication and division.  Lots of interesting math computation in the unit.  5th grade math has also been involved in a unit on multiplication and division, as well as geometry and volume.
     Science classes about biomes and ecosystems continue this week.  The students have been working on biome mapping on large poster paper.  Each group had a biome to investigate by first reading an information sheet,  and then creating a content map about their biome.  Each group created 5 questions about their biomes that all the others will have to complete as well.
      Social Studies has been split between Kru Beau's lessons about Thailand, and Ms. Deb's mapping and Columbus activities.  Kru Beau has taught us Thai numbers, writing our names in Thai, and many other interesting things about her homeland.  (Check out the cool picture at the top of this post!)  Ms. Deb has taught us about mapping the world, and language areas in the Western Hemisphere that were specific to the early explorers.  The students are currently completing map outlines showing where the many countries of the America's are located, and what the predominant languages are and why.
      So hopefully you have all received a conference notice as we are right in the middle of them.  I have a few more to schedule so I'm sure you will not be missed. 

             See you soon!     Mr. B and Ms. Deb