Thank you all so much for sending everything in for Grandparents Day.  It was great!  You all rock.  You have some pretty neat parents and grand parents too!  It was really nice meeting all of them.  

We began our Geology Unit today.  We are starting with learning the 3 basic types of rock formation.  Sedimentary, Igneous and Metamorphic.  

We finished our chapter last week on Subtraction Strategies.  The test scores on this chapter were all over the board.  Please take time to go over the test with your child.  Especially look over the inside.  The students have a solid grasp of subtraction and even how addition and subtraction relate.  The things students missed were primarily not answering the quesion that was asked or not following directions.  Talk to your child about whether their answer really anwers the question.  For example on this test.  Did you pick 12 pieces of fruit?  Did you count how many pieces of fruit were in each basket?  Do your subtraction sentences match your picture.  

In the next chapter students will be adding groups of the same number.  This will reinforce their addition skills and also get them ready for multiplication in 3rd grade.

During our geology unit we are going to focus on story writing.  Students will learn that different skills are used in different genres of writing.  We will begin this week by writing a short story about Halloween.

Friday at 11:00.  It will probably last about an hour.  The students are super excited!  I hope the grandparents are as well.  I could use a few parents to help during the event.  Email me if you are available.  

There is a graded math test in the folders today.  Please take some time to go over it with your child.  Talk about why they answered questions a certain way.  Check to make sure they understand their mistakes.  The students did exceptionally well on this test!  We will be taking our next chapter test later this week.  Soon the real fun begins and we start working with bigger numbers!

The grandparent unit is ending this week.  Next week we will begin our geology unit.  Students love to bring in rock sharings during this unit.  Sharing is a great time to practice public speaking skills.  If your child is bringing a rock to share, please make sure they have something planned to say in front of the class.  They will have some geologic observation skills they can use, they can tell why this rock is special, they can make guesses about how it was formed.  Lots of options.  Just make sure they know what they want to say.