Happy Thursday Parents! I hope you are having a good week! I can't believe that we are already at Thanksgiving! Where is our time going???  I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving next week!
I will be heading to Doon with my mom. It has been great having her here! We even got some of her Christmas shopping done!



Religion- In your child's folder is a Random Acts of Kindness calendar. This is an Advent Calendar for them to use during the month of December. I know some of the things probably can't be done, but it's always good to just think about what we can do in this month for others besides the gifts we need to buy for our loved ones. These can make someone's day just a little brighter! 

Congrats to our Fire Prevention poster winners! 1st Place- Keely 
2nd Place-Nevaeh and 3rd Place- Reese. Keely's poster along with the winners from 3rd and 4th grade were sent to Des Moines for the state competition. 

Reading- In your child's folder you will find their scores for Unit 2 test. Scores were up overall!!! I did talk to them about some of their choices that were incorrect. I reminded them that they had to go back and look for context clues in the sentences when they want you to define a word. If it is something factual, go back to the story and find it! If they are asking you to figure out something...you need to think about everything you learned and then come up with your reasoning for what happened. On the Edit and Revise section, the most missed were dealing with punctuating sentences or even spelling. 

They will start a new story on Thursday and that will mean a spelling test too. They will take the posttest and test over the story next Tuesday. I had forgotten that they will be participating in the Geography Bee after mass next week. This will be the first round. 

Math-- We will be finishing up our math chapter this week. They will test on Monday over this chapter. We will start fresh after Thanksgiving. 

Prayer Service-- On Friday we are having a Red, White, and/or Blue Day! This is to show our support for those who died and those injured in Paris last Friday. We are also just showing our support for all the cities and countries are dealing with political issues or terrorist attacks. We will have a school wide prayer service for peace at 2:40 p.m. We are telling the kids they can wear red, white, and/or blue on Friday. I told the 5th graders that this doesn't mean sweats or crazy hair or painting our faces. A pair of jeans and a shirt or sweatshirt will do! 

Muffins with Mom-- What a GREAT turnout! We hope you were able to enjoy your breakfast with your children! Dads--not to worry! There will be a Donuts with Dad in February. 

Thank you to some of my kiddos this week! I had three boys who took it upon themselves to organize the bookshelves in my room. They arranged all the books by categories! There is a whole shelf for "girl books". :) Thank you Kyle, Nolan, and Cade!!! You rock!

Another thank you to George, Patrick, and Maddie! George cleaned up the game cupboard (indoor recess games)for me! Patrick and Maddie sorted through 2 decks of cards to make one complete deck! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!! :)

Early Out- We are now getting out 2 hours early on Wednesday!!!Plan accordingly! I won't be putting out a blog next week! I hope you have a great weekend and a very Happy Thanksgiving next week! I will be taking Mom back to Doon. We will be celebrating with my sister and her family in Sioux Falls. Safe travels for everyone!!! 
God Bless, Miss Surma

Happy Thursday Parents! I hope you were able to enjoy your 3 day weekend! My mom and I had a great time in Waterloo visiting my sister and brother!

Reading- This week is the final story in this unit. They are reading a nonfiction piece called Cougars. It is an interesting story! The extra vocabulary lesson this week dealt with choosing synonyms that were stronger, weaker, or similar to the actual word. We discussed how we need to use our context clues to figure out what it means and then choose a word that would be similar. Sometimes we want that stronger word to be used because it gives a better description or a better picture as we are reading it. Our grammar this week is focusing on using quotation marks with direct quotes or when you are quoting from a text. 

They will have a unit test starting on Monday of this next week. It actually works out timing wise. They should be done testing on Thursday. On Friday, I will start a new story and spelling. I am doing that because we will only 3 days the following week due to Thanksgiving. This will give me 4 days to cover a new story. So that means next Friday they will have a spelling pretest and its posttest will be on Wednesday the following week. 

Book Reports are due this Friday

Math-- We started our week with estimating division quotients. We don't round with division, but instead use compatible numbers. For example, if I am dividing 1356 by 27, I would round 27 to the nearest ten... which would be 30. Then I need to look at the dividend and I tell the kids to look at the first two digits...1356. I ask myself, "Okay, what number is close to 13 that is divisible by 3?" "I can then divide 1200 by 30 or 1500 by 30 because 12 and 15 are both divisible by 3."  I just need to add my zeroes on. 

We also started dividing using the traditional strategy. The mistakes I am seeing so far are either in the multiplication or subtraction.  They are also checking their division through multiplication. This is where some problems come up as well because they have multiplied incorrectly or forgotten to add their remainder on. The process is going well. They will get it!! 

Religion- They did  a great job with our prayer service today! I was very proud of them. We will get back to the book tomorrow! We are finishing up our chapter on the Beatitudes.

Fire Posters-- The 3-5th graders created posters depicting this year's theme. We had the older students come in to vote and choose the top 3 in each grade. 6th graders voted on the 5th graders posters. The first place winner from each grade will then be sent to Des Moines. The local fire department no longer participates in this contest, but we wanted to bring it back! We will announce the winners by Monday for sure! 


Have a great weekend! God Bless, Miss Surma