Ms. C's Classroom Connection: That's a Wrap!

Happy New Year! I hope that the winter break was relaxing, rejuvenating, and fun.
Congratulations to this week's Wall of Fame winners! Students are consistently going above and beyond to show kindness, responsibility, respect, and safety.
The skating program will take place over the course of the next 4 Thursdays. Ms. Bannon and Mr. Peterson would like to stress the importance of each student wearing a helmet. Bike helmets are great!
We will have a science test within the next two weeks. Keep an eye out for a study guide!

Math: We started Topic 7 this week. This topic is on dividing decimals. Fact fluency is very important during this unit. Students must be doing Reflex math 3 times per week. Question to ask: What are "friendly numbers?"

Social Studies: We are currently working on a science unit. Our next S.S. unit will be on colonization.

Science: We are continuing our unit on classification. The students started off the week by completing an animal sort activity in groups. They had a group of toy animals and needed to figure out different ways to group them based on similar traits. Questions to ask: What percentage of classified animals are invertebrates? What percentage are vertebrates? What is the only mammal that lays eggs?

We classified some of our favorite animals based on similar traits.

Hmmm..where should we put this insect?

The fish caused a challenge with grouping!

Reading: We are continuing to read Hatchet and it's getting pretty intense! Brian has had to go to great lengths to gather food, make fire, and keep himself free from harm. One highlight from this week was an activity called reciprocal teaching. Students were in groups and each student was assigned a different role: reader, summarizer/questioner, and clarifier. They read a chapter together and needed to facilitate a discussion around the chapter. They did a great job! Question to ask: What happened with Brian and the turtle eggs?

Writing: We are finishing up our resolutions. We also did a couple writing activities based on Hatchet. We did a "write around" where students each wrote one sentence and then passed their paper. The next student wrote a related sentence, and so on. They then took this writing and revised it by "cutting and growing."