Hello out there in cyberspace!

Thank you all who attended the fair last Sunday. It was a lot of fun! We had Mad science activities, a jumper house, face painting, and treats for children and dogs.
Tony's class is having robot night on Friday November 20. They are going to be showing Transformers 2 and Wallie. This will be happening after school at 3:30. Snacks will be provided for, but will cost money. If you wish to see Transformers 2 you will need to obtain written permission from your parent. Also remember that next week is Thanksgiving break. Don't forget that we come back on Tuesday, since Monday is a staff development day.

For math we have been working on adding and subtraction with estimation and rounding to check. I will be sending all incomplete work home with your child. This is not homework but class work that is not finished. We finished our math assessment today I have graded some of them but not all yet.

We took a wordly wise test which I will be sending home as well. We also worked on capitalization and on our personal narratives. We came up with the theme of our stories today. Some of the themes were "do what you want to do not what your friends tell you to do, and always think before you act."

For our History projects we have been discussing The Boston Massacre, the Intolerable acts, and the Boston Tea party. Our book My Brother Sam is Dead is really getting suspenseful. We are having a hard time stopping the story each day.

Hola,
Some upcoming announcements are as follows- Tonight we are having a family night to present our "Me projects." You can purchase a meal from Pat and Oscars for five dollars if you like. This Sunday we are having a carnival to raise money for the sixth grade camp and get students to come to our wonderful, tremendously awesome school.

For language arts we are prewriting our personal narratives. These are autobiographical narrative that tell about a conflict in our lives and how it was resolved. We have been adding synonym tools and voice boxes and thinking bubbles to add quotations and dialogue to our stories. We are just about to start writing our rough drafts. For vocabulary we are continuing to use our Wordly Wise. We acted out the words and completed the packets.

In math we are doing division with decimals and remainders. Multiplication and division are fact families so it really helps to know all the basic facts. We also worked on estimation also known as "rounding numbers.."

For our read aloud we just finished reading Holes. Now we are reading a book about the American Revolutionary War. The book is called My Brother Sam is Dead. We are currently on chapter 6. Sam has run off to war to fight the British soldiers with the American militia army.

For our History projects we are creating a timeline of the events leading up to the war. Each student is responsible for completing their paragraph on the event that they were assigned to. They also need to come up with a test question for our assessment. For our final project we are going to be acting out the events of the war. Be looking our you tube video of our production.

This week we are going to be having our student led parent teacher conferences. These will be taking place during the afternoon on Wednesday November 4. If you have not already signed up for a time slot please contact me so we can scheduled a time to meet with you and your child. I still have some time slots available from 2:30 to 4:00. This meeting will give you the opportunity to discuss your child's progress as well as future goals you wish to make.

In our language arts curriculum we have continued to make progress in our writing fluency with our "power writes". The children have really been able to see the tremendous growth in their sustained writing. We have also begun to create our personal narratives. These stories are about some type of conflict we have had and how it was resolved. With the use of direct instruction and graphic organizers, I am confident that the stories will be great.

In math we are continuing to work with place value of decimals. We are ordering, adding, subtracting, and comparing them. As a warm up each day we are taking multiplication tests to make sure we understand our basic facts. I am pleased to discover that most of the students are pretty comfortable with them. This will allow for us to move on to more complicated math procedures such as division.

In our social studies project we are focusing on the American Revolution. We are currently putting science on hold so we can focus exclusively on this project. We are using time lines, creating books, and acting out these historic events. It has been a lot of fun so far.
Keep checking up with the blog and stay tuned for future announcements.

Sincerely,
Bill