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