Weeks of November 8th & 15th

I'd like to start this post by thanking all of you for the opportunity to share your child's, and my own, reflections on their school year with you during conferences. I was very impressed with the kid's thought processes and honesty towards their own approach in the classroom. What a great testament to their learning and budding maturity.

As I mentioned in a previous post, we began a host of new units in Room 213. Our math moved to geometry and we learned about parallel versus perpendicular lines and practiced creating them with various drawing tools. Now it's on to the properties of squares and rectangles.

As we take a break from science, we jumped right into our social studies curriculum. We are looking at how lives are changed through five specific lenses as the result of inventions or innovations, so we started by reviewing the lenses and then participated in several activities to solidify that knowledge. In one of the activities the kids got artifact boxes and had to decipher which lens it represented by the contents inside. They had both a good time and a strong discussion. We also watched several videos to begin to gain an understanding of what an innovation is and how it differs from an invention. I hope the kids enjoy this unit as much as my previous classes have enjoyed it.

Our reading and writing units have moved to informational reading and opinion writing, both non-fiction in nature. We are looking at non-fiction text through the over-arching theme of extreme weather. The kids have also, and will continue to check out non-fiction books of areas of interest to them to read along with the weather material. It's a great opportunity to learn more about something that turns them on. We began to talk about a thesis and how to support it in writing. We practiced by modeling putting the thesis down on paper with a box around it and then adding bullet points below to support that thesis (this unit is entitled 'Boxes and Bullets'). Generally, this is an easier genre of writing for the kids to master than the narratives in which we began the year.

It's hard to believe that we are almost at Thanksgiving break, WOW. We do have a fun week ahead. We will be visited by author John Parra on Monday afternoon; author assemblies are always quite engaging for the kids. On Thursday morning, we will be going to the North Shore Theater for a production of 'Innovation Nation' to enrich our SS curriculum. Big thanks once again to the PTA for their generosity!!! Finally, Friday is our read-a-thon that you are all invited to attend. Hopefully you and, or grandparents will be able to join us between 12:35 and 1:05 in the Learning Commons. Your kids should enjoy it just a little more than usual as it will also be a school wide 'Comfy Day'. What a great way to start Thanksgiving Break for all of us :-)