If you have next Monday and Tuesday off with your child, I hope you enjoy a long weekend together! Please look for an email from me soon about our live broadcasting while we present our opinion speeches next Thursday and Friday. You can tune in and watch by clicking on the YouTube link that I will be sending out. If you are unable to tune in for the live version, the link will be available to watch the presentations as a recording. I’ll also send out a list of students in the order of their presentations. We are very excited!!

This week has been busy with polishing up our opinion speeches and writing our final versions. We have worked hard on writing with a structure, examples, transition words, talking to our audience and paragraphing.

In math, we have been tackling some touch concepts. We are finding perimeter of quadrilaterals, but also comparing the perimeters to areas. When students are creating shapes with a given perimeter, then calculating and comparing areas, it gets tricky. Today, students seemed to leave with a much stronger understanding of this process. We are also continuing to master our multiplication facts. Most students are up to the X5 and X6 facts. If your child is not there yet, practice practice!! In class we talk about knowing our facts without stopping to do our count bys. Memorization is now the expectation.

We celebrated Michigan’s 181st birthday this week by learning about how Michigan became a state after being part of the Northwest Territory and a scuffle called the Toledo War. Ask your child how Michigan came to be known as the “Wolverines”. We continue to add activities to our Michigan Books, which I will have to show you at conference time.

In reading, we started a new unit. This is our Character Unit and revolves around the characters in our fiction stories. The mentor text that I am reading from to model strategies is Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. This week we focused on noticing what our characters SAY and what they DO. This helps us determine a character trait, which can help us develop a big idea or theory about our characters. Later in this unit, students will have an opportunity to discuss and debate characters in book clubs.

Some important upcoming dates:

• 2/5 & 2/6 – No school, mid-winter break
• 2/15 – Parent-teacher conference sign up link sent out
• 2/26 – Honors choir concert
• 2/28 – Parent-teacher conferences
• 3/1 – Parent-teacher conferences

Have a wonderful weekend!