It's hard to believe that another week has come and gone and we only have one more full week of school until vacation.  With the weather so nice, it doesn't quite feel like winter!  We continue to work hard and keep pushing ourselves to do our best!

In writing workshop we have been working tirelessly to prepare all the materials necessary for drafting our essay.  Hopefully you got to check out your child's boxes and bullets that came home this week on their drafting pad.  We continue to come up with narrative mini-stories to support our reasons, so that we have enough evidence!  We're looking forward to start drafting our essay's next week!

In reading workshop we are still in our non-fiction reading unit.  We have been studying different text structures this week, including time-order, cause/effect, problem/solution, all about, and compare/contrast.  Knowing what structure the author uses in their text can help readers organize the information and hold onto the main idea and important details.

In math we finished Topic 6, multiplying using both the expanded and standard algorithm.  As a whole the students did very well with this topic. We started Topic 7, multiplying by 2-digit numbers. We learned how to draw a model and make an array to help us solve for multiplying a 2-digit by 2-digit number.

In social studies we are learning about the explorers, Henry Hudson, Samuel de Champlain, and Giovanni da Verrazzano.  We have been studying what each explorer was looking for, the country they sailed for, and what they discovered.  We will be coming to the end of our first social studies unit next week and there will be a Unit Exam that will cover geography of New York State, Native Americans - specifically the Iroquois and Algonquin tribes, and the explorers we are studying now.

Here's a sneak peak at my weekly Friday performance!

Have a wonderful weekend!