Happy sunny Friday! I have so enjoyed meeting with some of you this week during our parent conferences, and I look forward to seeing the rest of you next week. It is always nice to connect and spend some time talking about your children.  For those of you who haven't had your meeting yet, it seems like it might be best to join the google meeting from your child's chromebook (or another chromebook) since the link is through my google classroom. If this won't work for you for some reason, let me know and I will set up a separate google meet for our meeting.

The big news this week is our classroom economy. Everyone has been paid, paid rent and taxes, and received penalties and/or bonuses.  Subtracting our checks from our check registers has proven to be far more difficult that I anticipated, so we are taking a week off (having our own version of a "shut down"-- and maybe I'll give them all a stimulus check the week after!) so that our subtraction skills can catch up.  The class is disappointed, but we WILL get back to it the week after next, and we will extend the final date by a week.

Speaking of subtraction, we are learning a variety of subtraction skills, leading up to using the US algorithm (which is what we used to call "borrowing.") Before I teach the class how to do that, I need to make sure they have a solid grasp of place value. Here is a look at the strategies we are currently using:

I hope this makes sense! In the third example, we have learned that we can go over to the "tens house" when we are short ones, but in that house, the people are all stuck together in groups of 10. We can't borrow only what we need -- we MUST borrow an entire 10 and bring them all with us over to the "ones house." It's not the way WE all learned to do subtraction, but with the solid understanding of what goes in each "house" or place, the students will be better prepared for doing this with larger numbers.  Let me know if you have any questions about this!

We are just about done with our nonfiction reading and writing units. I am really impressed by the writing the students have done. I see a lot of great organizational skills and a lot of pride in their work! I will not be printing these since some of them are 15-18 pages and they have a lot of color. But be sure to ask your child to share them with you digitally. They are really lovely! We will be moving on to opinion writing soon. This class certainly has some opinions!

Speaking of opinions, we had our first "current events" conversation today. We discussed the importance of respectful conversations, and we learned how to have a "hands-free" conversation so that it felt more like a discussion. We also talked about how all of us have different reactions to the news, and we have to consider how it affects each of us based on our identities. We also discussed how important it is to know what each of us can control and can't control, and what we can do to take care of ourselves. We discussed the events that took place in Washington DC last week, and I was surprised and please to see how well-informed and wise they all are! Some spoke a lot, some just listened, and some had some excellent questions. This class rocks!  I hope to discuss current events every Friday from now on. They are hungry for this kind of mature conversation! 

Discussing current events goes along well with our unit on democracy and citizenship. So far we have discussed what "democracy" means, what the constitution is, and what rights and responsibilities citizens have. Next week we will get into the Bill of Rights and the balance of power. Great stuff!

I hope you all enjoy a restful weekend. Remember that there is no school for students on Monday. I look forward to seeing them all on Tuesday!