December

Wow, it's nearly December! We have only 15 more days of school before Winter Break. My focus these next three weeks will to be to keep the class in as much of their usual routine as possible. There are many special events coming up so it will be a challenge!

Scholastic Book Orders will be sent home tomorrow and are due back Friday. I will have these orders expedited so the books will be here prior to Winter Break. 

In Language Arts we are starting to prepare for the WordMasters Challenge. The WordMasters Challenge is a fun and mind-stretching classroom competition for Language Arts students in grades 3 - 12. My class is involved because we work at least two grade levels beyond. Over 4,200 school teams, from 50 states, participated last year. Unlike other language-arts contests, which emphasize grammar and punctuation, this competition addresses higher-level word-comprehension and logical abilities and helps students learn to think both analytically and metaphorically. 

Tomorrow we will review what we know about analogies and will continue exercises and strategies. The test will be given in the classroom during the school day and even though no one in my class is in 3rd grade yet, all students will be participating. I will follow up with more information about this closer to the meet. 

In math, the students are very much differentiated but we are continuing to learn about units of measure and geometry as a whole group and are also on the road to wrapping up the subtraction challenge. We will start the multiplication challenge after the New Year. 

As part of Social Studies we will be talking about customs and traditions of Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa but if your family celebrates a different holiday I would be glad to incorporate it into the unit. Please let me know! Also, you are welcome and invited to bring in an activity that shares a special holiday or tradition that your family celebrates. Learning about other families and cultures is important in our classroom.  The kids are always very excited about the holiday season and would be thrilled to have a visitor come in and share some knowledge. 

Please let me know if you have any questions, concerns or if you are interesting in doing a holiday project with the class.