Tuesday's Message

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving!  It's nice to be back at it and away from the food!  My goodness the food!  
We visited my brother and his wife in Pittsburgh and we really pushed the limits on sensible when it comes to portion size, let me tell you.   
In Math today, our focus was on constructing three-digit numbers, but the real fun came when we had to problem solve.  If you're looking for some family math fun tonight, here's what we worked on (I think some boys and girls will need some time tomorrow to finish this up, so extra practice tonight might help) 
The problem goes like this:  
You need to buy 200 stamps.
They come in packages of 100, 50 and 10. 
List all the possible combinations you could make.  
I'm asking the kids to come up with five or six possibilities.

In our Literacy Block, we talked about how good readers read a variety of non-fiction texts.  At this level, we classify them into two categories: informational and biography. We ended up having a very interesting, but age-appropriate conversation about the texts I selected as examples:  Diary of Anne Frank  and The Titanic.Both texts are written for children at this age.  There may be questions about "bad guys" during World War Two tonight.  I kept things pretty simple and explained to the boys and girls that as they get older, they will learn more about these subjects. I did explain that Anne Frank and her family hid out from the bad guys during WW2 in an attic.  There may be some follow up questions from the children tonight that are best answered by parents. 

In January, we will take an age-appropriate look at the Civil Rights movement. There are many rich texts that we use to help children understand this time in History.  These books provide us with wonderful writing opportunities.  It is an excellent way for children to begin to write with perspective and give evidence from a text to support their ideas and opinions.  Children at this age are very interested in justice and equality.  
When we talk about the Civil Rights movement, some of the finest writing of the year is produced by the students.   
On a much lighter note, we're dismissing the students a little differently now at the school. We had our first run at it today and it went very smoothly. All students are escorted by their classroom teacher to various points throughout the school. Bused students are taken to the Gym where they wait for their buses to be called. 
So that's our Tuesday! 
Hope your's was as great as our's!