Happy Thursday!!! I hope you are having a good week!

Dress Code- As we are now changing seasons, remember no shorts are to be worn. I would suggest the kids come with a sweatshirt or winter coat, the mornings and recesses are getting colder. I would also like to remind everyone that in the dress code policy it states that leggings may be worn as long as the bottom of the dress, skirt or short extends to at least mid-thigh. This has been an issue on mass days mostly.

Math- They have been working on multiplying decimals this week. The trick seems to be counting how many places to the left we place that decimal in the answer. Most of the mistakes I am seeing are due to that fact. The other errors are not dropping zeros or it is in the multiplication and addition. They need to take time and slow down. Some of the errors could be easily fixed if they just slowed down. I talked to them this week about taking time with our work. The goal should be to do it well, not to do it quickly so that I don't have homework to do at night. We are also working on algebra!!! It is very basic. For example: If n=4, then what is n+5=?  They learned the different ways of writing an algebraic expression on Wednesday. n+4, b-4, 4b or 4x n, n/4. We are getting close to the end of our chapter. I would expect a test next week.

Language Arts- This week they read a nonfiction story on cougars. I learned a lot about that animal! They also learned about replacing a vocabulary word with a synonym. They had to determine whether that word had a stronger, weaker, or similar meaning to the sentence. In our grammar, we are focusing on quotation marks, quoting texts, using interjections with our quotations. They also read a few short poems. We focused on alliteration. That is when there is a particular consonant sound being used throughout the poem. They each created their own poem on a made-up Superhero! They will be sharing these with the class. Reminder: Book Reports are due on November 15. 

Art/Class Meeting- During art on Wednesday, each child was given a list with their classmates' names on it. They had to cut them out and then beside their name write at least one positive thing about them. They put them in envelopes. I will use them and create posters out of them for each of them. These posters will hang from our ceiling during the month of November. I think this is just a great way to recognize how well they know their classmates or that maybe they need to get to know them better.

I hope everyone has a great weekend! I am going to see Keith Urban in concert on Saturday! I am looking forward to that one!!  God Bless, Miss Surma