What a good-looking crew we have in Room 5!  It was so great to see everyone all dressed up at the concert on Tuesday night.  The performances were beautiful, and I know the kids all had a fabulous time!

Winter Concert 2016

At our school assembly this week, our class along with our buddies in Mrs. Klugman’s class, got to do the Pledge of Allegiance in sign language.  It was such an amazing thing for the kids to participate in.  Check out the video clip below!  Even some members of our audience were signing along with us!

In writing workshop we are starting a new unit in Literary Essay.  Many of the skills and strategies we learned from Personal and Persuasive essay will be carried over into this unit.  The students will begin to think about how they can write about their reading!

We have grown as readers since September!  Last weekend I was able to get our classroom library updated with some new books and new levels.  The students are very excited about this, and love getting back into their favorite series and fiction books.  We will be starting a new reading unit after we get back from February break.

This week we started topic 10 in math.  We are still exploring different strategies for dividing by 1-digit divisors.  We used rods and unit cubes to provide a concrete model for the steps that we take when we do long division.  I think this really helped some of them to understand why we perform certain steps the way we do.  Math fact practice is critical for these division topics.  Please remind your child they should be going on extra math every night.  This is part of their nightly homework. 

In science we learned about conservation.  We weighed three different shapes of clay three times and discovered that the weight stays the same.  Shape does not determine an object’s weight.  We came up with three different boat designs for our clay and tested these shapes to see if they would float or sink.  I apologize for the clay remnants left on their hands!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs. Riegel