Hello! It's hard to believe we just had a vacation -- once we are back in the classroom, it feels like we never left. We have worked hard this week, and we have 6 more weeks to go. I can't believe that the time is going by so fast.

Here's a quick rundown on the week:

Math -- We are still working on multiplying and dividing large numbers. The students ALL have good and efficient strategies for solving multiplication problems, and I am really excited about that. The bigger issue is that many of them still don't know their math facts, and that makes their answer incorrect despite the strategy being efficient. I know that memorizing your math facts is BORING, but I highly recommend that they all find ways to get those facts into their memories so they can access them fluently when necessary.  We just circled back to division with large numbers today. We are solving problems like this:

The apple orchard picked 1,548 apples. They can put 6 apples in each bag. How many bags of apples can they fill?

Here's how we solved it today, after asking if they could fill 100. How about 1,000? How about 200?

6 X 100 = 600

6 X 200 = 1,200

6 X 50 = 300

6 X 8 = 48

6 X 255 = 1,548

So the answer is 258 bags with one apple left over. We are working to use what we know about the magical 10 and 100. If we can multiply something by 10, then we can multiply it by 5 by halving it. Then we can multiply it by 15!

Reading -- We are getting ready to launch our final unit of the year, which will be a genre-based book group unit. The students will get to choose what genre they want to read, and then they will read with friends, jot their ideas, and get together to have discussions. I think they will enjoy this, and it will give them more practice with coming up with IDEAS about characters.

Writing-- We finished our essay unit this week! I'm impressed with the literary essays the class wrote, and particularly with their ability to find and use quotes to prove their opinions. Good for them! Today we did our final assessment, and I am looking forward to reading their essays over the weekend.

Science-- We have started the second and final bend of our energy unit. This unit is all about stored energy. We are making a variety of fun manipulatives that use rubber bands to store energy. Next week we will try out the rubber band roller cars we made today, and we will also use "bumper coasters" and marbles to learn about energy transfer. I hope the rain lets up so we can do some of this outdoors!

I was out yesterday for a medical appointment, and I will be out again on Monday for a personal day. I am never out so often, and I apologize for the 2 days so close together. I look forward to seeing the class on Tiesday.

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.