This Week in Room #107, 1/11/13

First - please note the important dates listed in Upcoming Events and the Quizzes and Tests section.

In Math we are finishing up Unit 5.   We will be taking the unit test next Wednesday.  The students will be working on a review in class and then they will have a second one to work on for homework.  It focuses on multiplication with 2 and 3 digit numbers. It starts out simple by showing 6 x 9 = 54, 60 x 9 = 540, and moves to 60 x 90 = 5400. We will also be learning more ways to multiply than just our standard method. The children will have to know the traditional method we all learned but they must also know the Partial Products Multiplication method. So this is the one that they have to practice when it comes home. Please call me or use the online reference book if you need help with this one.  

We keep working on our fast fact tests. Some of the students are not practicing 10 minutes a night. It is important that they do this so they can be successful in their math facts. It is important in the upcoming units on multiplication and division that they have them memorized. The mastering process for fast facts is addition, multiplication, division, and subtraction. The students who are putting in the 10 minutes a day with practicing them, seem to be doing quite well with the program and are flourishing.

We have put our unit on Economics in a holding pattern and may have to complete it in the beginning of the 3rd quarter.  Please keep discussing the terms that we use in Economics.  We have been learning about scarcity, supply, demand, opportunity costs, competition, market economy, consumers, producers, profit, price, and choice.

We have really focused hard on our Motion and Design unit.  We will wrap up experiments this next week and take the BA on Tuesday, January 22.  We have been exploring frictioin, rubber band energy, heat energy and of course simple machines.  The students have been enjoying working with their Knex cars that they will be using in our experiments.       

In Language Arts - We are continueing to work on our mini research projects in writing and in the computer lab.  We have been focusing on character traits in our reading workshop and also on the tools we can use to help comprehend the stories we are reading. 

It is important that your child read daily. I have provided a new Reading Calendar for the month of January for recording their minutes.

The January Reading Calendar and the January Handwriting Packet are due on February 4th.

• In reading we are working reveiwing the strategies we have learned over the years and are expanding on them. We are learning how to ask thick questions when we read. Thick questions can't be answered with just one or two words. They are deeper thinking questions.
• We are also exploring the different text features that we find in informational text. We are using this information in writing to create small research projects on our favorite animals.
• In writing we continue to work on grammar as well as writer's craft.
• The students will be having weekly spelling/grammar packets with test at the end of each week. Today is the first day for the packets. They are due every Friday and the children will be tested on 10 of the 20 words. This week's focus is on Homophones.