We can't believe February is here! This week was a short one, due to the half day and snow day. We continued working on division and had our first division test on Thursday. We worked on a lot of word problems and determined what operation we needed to use to solve them. We started a new chapter book in reading called, "A Dog's Life". In Writing, we continued working on our informational pieces. We tried writing a new chapter using one of the text structures we learned about last week. We had a lot of fun finishing up our Australian Animal posters and teaching the class all about our animals! They are hanging outside of our room, so if you are in the building come check them out! We finished our Australia unit and started learning about China this week. We also learned some new letters in cursive!

Written by Charlie and Audrey :)

This week was superb! In Writing we learned 4 strategies to use in our informational pieces. They are boxes and bullets, pros and cons, compare and contrast, and cause and effect relationships. On Tuesday we attended a special science presentation about energy by Tumalow Energy. We learned that a snickers bar has more energy than dynamite! On Wednesday we went to the Star Lab and learned about the winter constellations. We found Orion, Taurus, Canis Major, and Sirius, which is the brightest start in the sky and part of Canis Major. In Social Studies we organized our Australian Animal notes into good paragraphs to include on our future posters. In Reading, we focused on Informational genre by reading Time for Kids articles and identifying different parts of informational text. We continued learning division in math and practiced the strategies we learned to find the quotient. We were excited that the temperatures got better and we got to go outside for recess again! Wooohooo!!!

Written by Julia :)

This week in Math we continued learning division strategies. We learned how to divide a number into equal groups and use repeated subtraction to find the quotient. In Reading we focused on reading informational texts and articles to learn more about the characteristics of informational non-fiction. In Writing we continued our informational unit. We organized our ideas into the chapters we chose for our book. We also began writing one of our chapters. In Social Studies we finished up researching our Australian animals. We took all of our notes and organized them into sections about our animals, which included, description, habitat, diet, and other fun facts. Miss Hunter visited our class again this week and read us another chapter of "Pumsy". We reviewed "clear minds" and "mud minds" and learned all about "I messages". "I messages" tell someone how you are feeling in a certain situation. Today we got to watch the 4th grade choir and 5th grade band perform their concert. It was a lot of fun!

Written by Connor and Angie :)

This week in Math we began division! We learned that division is related to multiplication and if you look at the division sentence backwards, you will see the multiplication! We also learned how to make groups to solve a division problem. In Reading we finished up our compare and contrast unit. We read "Goldilocks and the Three Bears" and compared and contrasted it to "The Three Snow Bears". We also read a book and article about Martin Luther King Jr. Miss Hunter, our guidance counselor came in and read us a book called "Pumsy". We learned the difference between our "mud minds" and our "clear minds" by doing an experiment with water and food coloring. In Writing we began our informational unit. We picked a topic and wrote a fast draft of everything we knew about our topic. Then, we began to make a Table of Contents of chapters we want to include in our informational books that we are going to write. In Social Studies we started researching our Australian Animals. It is so much fun learning cool facts about them! We had an awesome week!

Written by Jack N. :)

We had an awesome first week back at school after our vacation! In Math we reviewed Multiplication and practiced story problems. We practiced the steps to solve each problem by underlining the question, circling the important information, showing our work, and labeling our answers. Today we had our unit test on Multiplication. In Reading we continued to practice comparing and contrasting. We used a Venn Diagram to compare and contrast Dolphins and Porpoises and Frogs and Toads after reading articles. In Writing we started our informational writing unit. We picked a topic and used our five fingers as an organizer to teach our classmates about our topic. We tried to talk like experts and tell them everything we knew! In Social Studies we read about our Australian animals and began to write down some facts from our books. We really loved starting "Just Dance" in P.E. class. We each had a team and had to dance to get points for our team. It was so much fun!

Written by Lincoln and Caleb :)

We had a really fun week in school! On Wednesday we got to go to a special science presentation that was presented by people who work at Ecovative. They taught us all about mushrooms and how they can be used to make packaging materials instead of using foam. Using mushrooms is much better for the environment! We got to help make our own bowls using the mushroom material. We will keep them in our classroom to hold supplies. It was awesome! In Math this week we learned how to multiply 3 factors using the Associative Property of Multiplication. We also learned how to multiply with multiples of 10. We had our first Mad Minute today and did great! In Reading we finished Gooseberry Park. It was a really cool book! We learned how to compare and contrast two things. We compared and contrasted two characters from the story and we also compared ourselves to one of our classmates using a Venn Diagram. We finished our Narrative final copies in Writing. We compared our Narratives to the story we wrote before we learned about Narrative writing and couldn't believe how much our stories improved! We can't wait to share our stories with you at the Holiday Party! In Social Studies we continued learning about Australia. We learned all about the animals that live there and made a book out of them. We are excited to pick an animal to research!

Written by Julia and Charlotte C. :)

We continued learning multiplication in Math this week. We learned the Commutative, Distributive, Identity and Zero Properties of Multiplication. We also practiced facts and learned a new game called "Multiplication Roll'Em". In Writing, we learned how to add quotations to the dialog in our stories. We also learned how to make paragraphs. We finished editing and began writing our final copies of our Narratives. We are excited to share them with our families at the Holiday Party! In Social Studies we read a book called "Are We There Yet". It was about a family who traveled along the coast of Australia. We traced their route on our own map of Australia and learned about each place along the way. One place we thought was really cool was Uluru, the immense rock in the outback. In Reading, we continued to read Gooseberry Park. We continued to study character traits and write summaries of the chapters. We love the book and are almost at the end.