Connections and Curriculum for the Week of December 11

Weekly Highlights:

Three of our students, Adeline, Abigail, and Romy, on their own initiative, helped organize a school wide winter holiday food drive.  By the end of the week, the school hallways were dotted by cardboard boxes that were filled with donated goods by our families. It was a caring and successful mission and we are very proud of these wonderful students. 

On Friday, December 15, our class had our Winter Multicultural Celebration from 1:45 - 3:30 hosted by class parents, Mrs. Daniel, Mrs. Frampton, Mrs. Remer, Mr. and Mrs. Briggs, and led by Mrs. Chan.  

Here were the celebration's activities: 

* Floor circle greetings, discussion of season of light, introduction to activities

* Activities: food & drink, dreidel game, and paper crafts (snowflake cuttings and red envelopes with foreign currency rubbings)

* Closing: Floor circle presentation on Mayan cocoa with tasting, and revealing clay lanterns that the students made in there last two Art Docent Led classes. 

Mrs. Chan did a wonderful job leading the event, and everybody enjoyed Dreidel, which was unknown to almost every student.  Children, especially girls, enjoyed making gifts for others, we shared delicious food, and circle activities were a special opportunity for the students to connect meaningfully.  

Thank you for making this a special afternoon for the students.

curriculum

Math: We are completing Unit 2 and will have the Unit 2 test on Tuesday, December 19

We have begun review problems for the unit and have one final review on Monday. 

Students will be multiplying and dividing multi-digit quantities, including decimals, and finding decimal remainders.  They will have computational questions, make estimations, and have application word problems that they should use the Read, Draw, Write method to solve. 

Monday, December 11,  Advanced SBAC Math Students began their once weekly session with Mrs. Horman, 11:00-11:30.  The session runs for 10 academic weeks and concludes in March when a second group of four students will begin. 

Language Arts:

Cereal box biography book reports were collected. We will have some sharing work around these next week.

Students in Group A met their Kindergarten Book buddies on Thursday. 

We are reading Ugly, and autobiography by Robert Hoge for our read aloud.  

In integrated reading and writing lessons, students continue to work on their Graphic Novels Unit.  They have switched into their 5th and final graphic novel.  Summarizing is one focus that has been driving the mini lessons in reading. This week student were introduced to the problem / solutions format of summarizing so their main idea and chosen supporting points wouldn't miss those key elements when succinctly retelling a story.

Students had their Unit 5 Spelling / vocabulary tests on Friday

Social Studies: 

Students concluded their anthropological study tour on Native North American Indians.  They will have compare and contrast work using their new information next week.