Happy New Year

Welcome to the start of a brand new year! We have so many fantastic adventures to come this school year. I am looking forward to seeing all of the students tomorrow morning. It has been a great two weeks for my family and I can't wait to hear about all of the exciting things the students have been doing.

This week will be packed with learning!

Reader's Workshop
     We will begin a new unit this week. We will be learning about Mysteries. This is a fun unit to teach and the students enjoy trying to solve the mysteries before the detectives. Our unit will focus on the structure of a mystery and the clues the author gives to help you solve the mystery or to throw you off the trail.

Writer's Workshop
     Our new writing unit is Informational Writing. The students will be asked to choose a topic that they are very familiar with to write about during this unit. This would make a great dinner conversation on Monday night! We will be generating a few possible ways to organize our work this week.

Math
      Division!!! We have complete our multiplication units. We will continue to practice our facts in school. Please continue to practice them at home as often as possible. We will begin division by relating it to subtraction and the relationship to multiplication. This is were the students will really benefit from knowing their multiplication facts.

Social Studies
     We are learning about Brazil this month. We will focus on comparing Brazil's culture to everything we have learned about the USA. This week we will learn how the needs/wants of various Brazilian people compare to our country's needs/wants. We will also learn about the Brazilian flag and what it symbolizes.

Science
     We have learned the myths surrounding some of the winter night sky's constellations. This week we will have the opportunity to find them in Star Lab. This is the district's portable planetarium that Elsmere uses during the month of January. We will use Star Lab three times this month in class. We will also host an event for you to come into school one evening this month to experience Star Lab for yourself. More details coming home about this event this week!

Tomorrow the students will bring home their spelling list for the week and a new reading calendar for the month of January. They will also bring home our final multiplication test to be signed and corrected by Friday.