Wishing you Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!

This Week's Mantra: "Get in the Spirit"

Thank you to our cheerleaders who taught us a cheer to get in the spirit!

Holiday Craft!

Pajama Day!

Dance Party Friday!

Our special activity today!

We have had a busy few weeks full of lots of new learning!

Math: We finished our unit on division. Students worked on real world multiplication projects or creating multiplication fact games. Also, students practiced both multiplication and division skills.

Reader's Workshop: We finished our interactive read aloud Little Dog, Lost by Marion Dane Bauer. During this unit students worked on writing about their thoughts about the text and providing specific evidence from the text to support their thinking. We finished the unit by discussing the theme or message the author has for the reader. Students worked in groups to develop a theme statement and provide evidence for their thinking. 

Archeologist Visit
Mrs. Silvia, of the Haffenreffer Museum at Brown University visited our classes again to present information about the Native people of the Arctic. Mrs. Silvia brought real artifacts to help students learn about how the culture of these people is greatly impacted by their unique climate. Students tried traditional Inuit games that were used to build hunting skills, dressed in traditional Inuit clothing, and tried a traditional ceremonial dance. Thank you to the JFK PCC for funding this great learning experience!

Social Studies:
In December we studied our neighbors to the north, Canada! Some students had the opportunity to even learn some French! Students used their knowledge about Canada to create a brochure to convince others to visit Canada!

Writer's Workshop:
Students worked hard this month to develop a fiction story. Our mini lessons focused on creating characters in their story that are complex, but also make sense as a whole. Students then choose a "situation" to put their character in that helped their character to learn a lesson or change. Finally we discussed how to end our stories by reminding the reader's of our theme. This week students moved to the editing stage of the writing process in their fiction stories. We are focusing on some new grammar and mechanic skills that students can apply to their writing. Students will also continue to practice their skills in paragraphing, dialogue, and editing their stories for spelling.

BE SURE TO CHECK OUR YOUR Child's STORY, sent home today!


Dancers of the Week!

PBL (Creative Art's Friday)

This month students put their weather stations to the test! We were able to collect rain and observe the wind speed and wind direction.

Project-Based Learning Weather Stations

Students have worked hard to plan, design, and build a weather station that measure two weather phenomena. On Monday we will test out our weather stations by bringing them outside! Students will collect data each day this week.