Welcome to 2018

We had a great couple of days adjusting to being back at school. This week we reviewed school and classroom expectations, began to wrap up our social studies & writing units, and started new math and reading units! Lots of new learning is coming in 2018.

Next week we will finish our Social Studies Westward Expansion unit. The last learning of this unit includes understanding the technologies of the 1800s. Today we learned about the telegraph. Next week the students will explore the Pony Express and the railroad. They will create a project (in class) to showcase their learning. After this unit we will start our next science unit focusing on electricity.

In writing the students are in the process of creating a poetry anthology to show all of their learning. These presentations will be digital and finalized next week. After this unit we will begin informational writing (see packet in Friday Folders for additional information).

This week in reading we began easing into our next non-fiction unit. In this unit the students will become "Non-Fiction experts". Look at the reading letter that came home in Friday Folders to see additional information.

In math we began our new unit, Rational Numbers. This week the students explored a real-life situation involving students going on a field trip and a "fair sharing" of sandwiches for the trip. They worked with partners to evaluate the situation, finalize models and clear answers, create a poster, and analyze others work. Phew! They're already back to working hard after the break!

We were able to have quite a few Family Field Trip presentations this week. The students are doing a wonderful job teaching others about the places they visited. We are looking forward to the rest of the presentations next week.