Dear Parents, Happy Wednesday or Thursday! (depends on when you read it) 😊

I like this weather much better! We have been able to get outside for recess and doing some classwork! 

Math- We moved onto exponents this week after reviewing the properties again on Monday. Some of the kids really struggle with breaking up a number into 2 numbers. For example 51. I would break that into 50 +1. 107= 100+ 7. They want to do 5 and 1 or 1 and 7. They aren't thinking about their actual values. On Tuesday, I taught them about exponents...we did a bunch together and many of them said, "Oh, this is so easy." That didn't seem to hold true when they had to do the assignment. We did more work on Wednesday with them. That went much better I think. Getting them to multiply by 10s can be tricky. Plus if the exponent was 4, some thought there should be a 4 in their answer. We are also working our way into multiplication. This should be review because I know they did that last year. They may need some extra work on doing double digits  and multiplication. I don't know if they remember to drop that 0 when multiplying in the tens column. 

Religion- They are finishing up their chapter this week. They will do a study guide and right now it looks like the test will be next Monday. I will let you know if that changes. They did great at mass! I heard there were some technical issues for those watching so I am sorry if you missed out. I think the kids did great, but it is very odd only having two grades in there and then the cameras. I told them we had some kinks to work out, but that we can do that at our next mass. 

Reading- This week we read a story about two 5th graders running for class president. They had to give a speech to their class to persuade the votes. Miata gave a very formal speech. She also is planning things that will beautify the school. Rudy was very informal. Rudy wants more recess for the kids and ice cream every day! While the kids liked his choices best, they knew that probably wouldn't happen. Our grammar this week is complete subjects and complete predicate parts of a sentence. This is difficult. Kids just have a hard time finding the verb in a sentence and then are thrown even more if they put an adverb in front of it. They are also working on subject/verb agreement.  They will have their posttest on Friday in spelling. This is our third story in the unit so there will be a cold read they have to do which means 10 more questions. 

FAST testing will be starting up soon! This year they will doing that in reading and math. The math portion is all on their computers. 

No school next Friday. We have PD at the public school that day. 

I hope everyone has a great weekend! 

God Bless, 

Miss Surma