Week of February 29th

This week we celebrated Read Across America. This included reading in the hall as a school, reading with a buddy, high school readers and reading outside at recess in the SNOW! In class, we read a Scholastic News about Green Eggs and Ham. Green Eggs and Ham started as a bet! He was bet that he could not write a book with 50 or less words. Something else we found interesting was that Dr. Seuss got in some trouble when he was a kid! And of course, no Read Across America week could be complete without a Dr. Seuss inspired snack based on One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish which was an ocean of blue jello with a red gummy fish and crashing waves of whipped cream!

In Topic 10 of math we are learning different strategies to add 3 digit numbers. Some strategies we are using are columns, expanded form and place value blocks. It is very interesting to see which strategy each student chooses for themselves. We always say to find what works for you and make it work!

Our story of the week was Marti and the Mango, a tale of a mouse who must find a mango for a party. But the problem is that he does not know what a mango is so he asks some friends for some help. His friends provide him clues for what a mango is based on its size, texture and color. Along the way he sees some other fruits like a banana, mango, kiwi, guava, avocado, coconut and a watermelon so we tried these fruits out for ourselves. Our favorites were the mango and watermelon. Kiwi was also liked! Similar to Marti, the students wrote clues about their own favorite fruit that you will be able to guess at conference next week. One other fun skill from the story was alliteration. There was avocado with alligator, cockroach with coconut, Marti with mango and more. We came up with some of our own like.. The ant went across the American army. Jaguars jump on jellyfish jugs. Caleb cooks cake for Camron.

We explored the forest habit a little more this week as we are continuing to research habitats. Next week, we are going to begin to build a food chain found in our habitat. We have also enjoyed the real life habitat of the eagle's nest in our own backyard. Have you seen the two eggs? We are so excited to have eaglets again. We can't wait to see them hatch in about 35 days.

Next Week-

Scholastic Book Fair- On Monday, we will be visiting and making our wishlists. Students can go before or after school to make a purchases.

Testing- Next week on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday in the morning we will be administering the In-View assessment. I know that there is a lot of sickness and in many forms (!) going around but please try to make sure your child is here and on time those days. Thanks in advance!

I look forward to seeing everyone at conference next week.
Marissa Wilhelm