Week of February 14th

Here's the great part about this picture, the kids are doing a wonderful job spreading kindness. I guarantee you that when your child opened his or her valentines (or when the Veterans that we made valentines for with our buddies did), there was a big smile in the room as well. I also want to give a shout out to all of the amazingly creative receptacles for the cards. I had no idea that there were so many ways to carry Valentine's Day Cards :-)

We began filming our PSA's and will spend the upcoming week both filming and editing them for publication. If the first group's effort was indicative of the learning experience for all of the kids, I am not sure that I could be more proud of my students. Our week in science had us learning how to trouble shoot incomplete circuits. The purpose of this is two-fold, first and foremost the kids need to have a plan when something invariably goes wrong during the wiring process, the other reason is so I don't hear the common refrain (whine), "Mr. Elman, it's not working."

In math, we had a challenging week of understanding and applying bar models in order to help solve calculations with fractions. Then, we used the bar models and other previously learned methods to solve word problems. We wrap up the unit with line plots and then post-test the kids on Friday. We start decimals the following Tuesday and that will take us right up until break. The kids will stay in the same groups for decimals but will have a new teacher for the unit.

I hope you had the opportunity to spread a little kindness on Valentine's Day too and that everyone enjoys your three-day weekend.