Tuesday, January 5, 2016

The Force has awaken in room 14!

Greetings young padawans and families!





Our last day before winter break was epic. I can not begin to describe all the fun we had building tie fighters or playing the Star Wars Games. My favorite part was watching you engineer and design your droids. I am looking forward to you finishing your designs the next two weeks. I hope to post a few of them on our website to share. For those of you who saw The Force Awakens over the break, I appreciate you not sharing any spoilers with your classmates. We will find a day and time when we can get together to share our theories. I just finished reading the book and there is so much more to the story that is in the book but not the movie.

You will be excited to know that this month's book order has several Star Wars books that we can add to our classroom collection or you can buy for yourself at home. It is super bonus point month, so we will get extra bonus points for every order we place in class. In addition, every student that orders gets a Star Wars bookmarks. You can order in class or directly from the scholastic website. Checks need to be made out to Scholastic Reading Club. Our class code is GMY2N and the link to order is scholastic.com/readingclub. The order will come home tomorrow and the last day to order will be next Friday, January 15th. 

One big change we are making in class in the new year is a change to our math and reading blocks. We have extended each block by a few minutes to give us extra time for rotating through our reading and math groups. The morning block is from 8:10-9:25 and the afternoon block is from 11:55-1:15. Please plan accordingly when scheduling medical appointments. The best time to pull students out is during their specials block from 10:00-11:05. 

In Science, we have started learning about the dust bowl and wind erosion. Students will be taking their first district science assessment with wind erosion next week. It is really important students are here because the assessment is based on the hands on learning in the lab. Our science days are Monday (2-3) and Wednesday(12-1:15). I encouraged students to speak with older relatives that might still be around and experienced this time period. Our students live in such a modern world that it is difficult for them to imagine what life was like back in the 1930s. We are building background knowledge in class by reading books and articles about the event and watching some recordings about the dust storms. We will use our study of wind erosion as a launching point into our natural disaster research. The kids are really excited to be studying this, so I hope they share some of their experiences with you at home.

We are also taking our district math assessments. In morning math, we are designing candy boxes using volume and surface area. In afternoon math, we will be using area and perimeter to design a backyard. The goal of both assessments is to provide students the opportunity to apply skills they are learning through real life simulations. After we finish the assessments, students will be finishing off their place value lessons and working towards proficiency of long multiplication and division skills. Please make sure your child uses Reflex during the week to get their basic facts mastered. It makes the process of doing long multiplication and division so much easier. 

As you can see, there is a lot happening in our classroom the next few weeks. We also have our classroom field trip to the Science Center to look forward to on January 20th. Remember to plan ahead for your child's arrival and departure. Students will need to be at school and ready to board by 7:15AM and will return later around 4PM for parent pickup. Chaperones, I will be sending home more information for you this week via your child. 

Have a wonderful week and may the force be with you!





Master Jedi Moricz :)

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