Week of 12.19.11 - 12.23.11

I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season, and that you're finding the break to be relaxing and enjoyable.  We had a really fun week leading up to our holiday break, and BOY did we work hard!  

Writing:  By this point, hopefully you've all received your "holiday gift" from your student, our Choose Your Own Adventure books!  Each group of students spent several weeks developing their story based on the popular Choose Your Own Adventure series. Within every book, the reader finds him/ herself choosing the path of their journey, thus selecting from multiple endings to the story.  The reader's fate is determined by the choices they make, some are "happy" and some are treacherous!  

The students used a graphic organizer to develop their idea and the multiple endings.  They conferred with me, Ms. Casey, and our incredible parent volunteers to ensure that each plot twist made sense.  Each story has at least four different fates.  Every group worked on using strong word choice and many included some vivid descriptions, similes, and even those difficult metaphors!  They also worked hard at compromising on the outcomes of each plot twist, as well as designing a cover page and deciding on a title.


It was a very ambitious project, but we're proud of how it turned out.  I'd like to send an enormous thanks to Wendy Giardina, Ms. Casey, and my sister, Kate, for working "like elves in Santa's workshop" (as one of the kids put it), up until literally the last minute of school on Friday.  Their hard work allowed for the books to be copied and bound so that you could enjoy them over break.  Happy Holidays!!

4th Grade Math:   We continued with Unit 5:  Big Numbers, Estimation and Computation this week.  The major skill in Unit 5 is double-digit multiplication.  The students will learn three methods by which to solve these problems; we practiced the first this week.  It's called "Multiplication Wrestling" (or the "old-school" term:  "FOIL").  See example below:

• Your problem:  32 * 56 =
• First you break up the numbers into teams:  (30 + 2) * (50 + 6) =
• Then you multiply each of the combinations of numbers:
• First:  30* 50 = 1500
• Outer:  30 * 6= 180
• Inner:  2 * 50= 100
• Last: 2 * 6 = 12
• Last, you add their totals:  1,792

5th Grade Math: Check out Ms. Wennerberg's website and newsletter for updates: http://www.op97.org/swennerberg/

Science:  *** An important note:  we begin our ecosystems unit upon our return from winter break in January.  Each child needs 3 clear, 2-liter bottles in order to create an ecosystem (and I need time to cut them all to the right size!).  With that in mind, please send in any bottles you collect over the holidays as soon as possible.  We need a total of 135.  They need to be clear (not tinted or green), rinsed out, and label-free please. 

Social Studies: Check out Ms. Wennerberg's website and newsletter for updates: http://www.op97.org/swennerberg/ 

Miscellaneous:

• Bottles, bottles, bottles!  Please send in your 2-liter bottles. We will use them as terrariums and aquariums for our next science unit, starting in January. They need to be clear (not tinted or green), rinsed out, and label-free please. Thank you!!