Hello Parents, I hope this has been a good week for you! It always seems a bit crazier for me when we have 4 days. 

Mass- The 5th graders did a great job with our mass on Wednesday! If your child wasn't in this one, they will be in the next one which will be after Thanksgiving. 

Reading- This week they are reading a story called Double Dutch. This is a nonfiction story about a group of girls that have a Double Dutch jump rope team and they compete in contests. We are working on sequencing of events this week. Their grammar is working on nouns-- common and proper. They know the rule for proper nouns is that they have to begin with a capital letter.  They did a worksheet on Wednesday that gave them a common noun like state. They had to give me a proper noun like Alaska for that word. They also had to practice their spelling words by writing them in rainbow colors! 

We are almost finished with our book Wonder. The movie comes out in November. I told the kids that IF it comes to Creston, I will pick a day to go and if any of them or you want to join me ...we can see it together! I know many of them have watched the trailer already. It's funny because a scene I read on Wednesday is in the trailer. They told me it doesn't happen at night...it's in the day. I told them...that is because they can change things from book to movie. One of them said,"The book is always better!" I couldn't agree more!

Math- We are halfway through the chapter. They are working on multiplication by single digits right now. This should be review. They are also estimating to find the product. I have them rounding the number to the largest place value position and then they can do the rest mentally. On Wednesday they did more of this, but had to fill in the answer in a crossword box. Many of them told me the answers weren't working in the boxes until we looked over their work. We found errors like the copied the problem wrong, they multiplied wrong, or they added instead. It is a good checking position for them! 

Acts of Service- Last weekend I saw a post from a father in Idaho who was talking about his 8 year old son. This son is bullied every day because of his facial deformities- much like Auggie in our book. The son has even talked about suicide. He is 8.  I felt horrible and messaged the dad privately. I asked him if my 5th graders could write Jackson letters to hopefully lift his spirits and let him know that others are thinking of him. The father, Dan, is beyond grateful. So, I am going to have them make Jackson some cards and I will mail them.  What I want our kids to realize is that we need to accept all differences, not just the ones that we can see on the outside. We need to accept all people and they don't have to have major deformities for us to stand up for them. Okay, I'm done now. :)

Have a great weekend! I hope to see some of you at the Color Run on Sunday. I really enjoyed it last year! I am heading Waverly and Dubuque this weekend. I get to finally see my niece  Grace play soccer for Loras College! Go Duhawks!  
God Bless, 
Miss Surma