The week before holiday break is always exciting and full of special activities. We reviewed multiplication, division and patterning in math and participated in a digital break out called, "Escape the Pyramid." It was challenging but fun and everyone persevered. We are embracing the mantra, "productive struggle." We worked on stamina in reader's workshop and got caught up on reading journals and reading logs. We continued to write information poems and conduct research on Canada in order to create travel brochures. Our special activities included crafting, a gallery walk of the treasure maps we created in project based learning, party in a bag and a surprise from Mrs. Williams. We will hit the ground running in 2019!
Thank you so much for the beautiful ornament that is personalized with messages from the children; so creative and clever! I can't wait to share it with my family. I love the basket of goodies and all of the well wishes for this holiday season. I am deeply touched and honored by all of donations made to Answer The Call in my name. My father and brother will be tickled pink when I let them know about your generosity. Have a wonderful holiday filled with family, fun and great memories!
Ann Williams
We have had an awesome two weeks in Room 23. We were treated to a program by The Haffenreffer Museum and we learned all about the Inuit. We have also started a unit on Canada and will be creating travel brochures about this great country. On Friday, we took a Google Expedition to Canada and it was awesome! Social studies and reader's workshop are overlapping as we focus on nonfiction text structures, nonfiction text features and close reading. We also participated in a webinar with Jacqueline Woodson. The entire 4th grade will be researching dog breeds in January and as a kick off to our unit, we attempted to participate in a webinar with Jessica Kensky, author of Rescue and Jessica. The presenters were experiencing technical difficulties but archived their presentation for us to watch next week. It was fun to learn about service dogs and how they help people and impact our world. In writing we are finishing our point of view/next chapter stories and are writing informational poems. We have wrapped up our math unit on division and will be continuing to practice this skill for the rest of the year. We are starting an enrichment project that uses all four math operations and involves creating a resort. Such fun! One more week in 2018, let's make it a great one!
I cannot believe that the holidays are only three weeks away! Many people told me that time would fly once I had children of my own, and truer words were never spoken! Don and I don’t even remember what we did with all of our time before Liv and Luke came along.
I believe, as many people do, that the holidays are about the “spirit of giving.” Don and I are working on teaching our children that it is better to give than to receive, which is easier said than done sometimes. I know too, that children like to give their teacher a gift at holiday time. I always appreciate everything that the children give to me, but please know that I don’t expect anything. My favorite gifts of all are donations that the children make to a food pantry or charity on my behalf, and then make a card to let me know what they have done. It is wonderful to see the look in their eyes and hear the joy in their voices when they explain how they felt about helping those that are less fortunate than they are. I cherish these moments with them!
One of my favorite charities is the New York Police and Fire Widows’ and Children’s Benefit Fund. My father and grandfather are retired NYC firemen and my brother is retired from the NYPD. This is the seventeenth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy and many of my brother’s fellow officers and firemen friends are still suffering from the effects of that day. Two years ago, the brother of his partner, who is a fireman with a young family, was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer as a result of his rescue and recovery efforts at the site of the Towers. For many reasons, firemen and policemen hold a special place in my heart.
I hope that you will enjoy your holidays, and all of the preparations that go into making this a wonderful and exciting time of the year. Happy Holidays!
Sincerely,
Ann Williams
New York Police and Fire Widows' and Children's Benefit Fund
Our week back from the Thanksgiving holiday was fun and full! We participated in many science experiments and activities and the science learning will continue next week. Ask your child to tell you all about it! We also will start learning about Canada next week and the students are very excited to learn all about our neighbors to the north.
Have you been hearing a lot of discussion about dogs? Our latest interactive read, Little Dog, Lost, by Marion Dane Bauer, is a huge hit. It is a novel in verse, which is a new text structure for many of us, but one that we enjoy. We will finish reading this week and then start an in depth unit of study on nonfiction reading.
We will continue fiction writing next week with a project involving model magic. In addition, students have been engaging in a variety of free write activities; comic strips, stories, non fiction research, researching recipes, and poetry to name a few. On Friday, we were treated to a Skype visit with author, Josh Funk. Mrs. Merten, Mrs. E and I were his guest readers for a book that will be published in March of 2019!!! It was super exciting to get to read a book that hasn't even been in libraries yet! It was a very special treat. Shout out to Mrs. Merten for setting up this great visit. It is always wonderful for the students to get to meet real authors and ask them about their books and their writing process. It is a very motivating experience for young writers. Josh Funk will be at Unlikely Story in Plainville next Saturday. Check out our Tweets in the Twitter Gadget on the right hand side of the blog.
Long division is our latest focus area in math and it is challenging but EVERYONE is making steady progress. Please continue to practice math facts and the division will come along. Click the video below to see a tutorial on the partial quotients algorithm (method). My only bugaboo with the video is that the presenter does not line up her numbers properly, but she does fix her mistake. Check it out!
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