Happy Valentine's Day

                                                                                                  February 8, 2016
Dear Parents,

Moving right along, we are now half-way through the 3rd quarter.  Before long we will be scheduling Parent/Teacher Conferences.  I really wish this school year would slow down!!

*******Important*******Important*******Important*******

We have a student in Room 17 that has been recently diagnosed with a tree nut and sunflower allergy.  This is just to give everyone an awareness, everything will run the same for our classroom.  As per parent request, our classroom will not become a food free zone.  I would like to use this opportunity to remind you that students should not be trading and sharing food at school!

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Math
We have continued working on adding and subtracting with renaming within 1,000.  This is a very complicated standard (remember, it was started at the end of the first quarter).  All of the time has been very worthwhile, as students are really picking up on the renaming, because it is all done through decomposing and composing numbers students are really understanding how to break down and rename the different place values.  

This past week we focused on addition using branch method on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.   On Thursday students worked on subtraction using the branch method with renaming in the tens place.  Here's an example...

762   -    43  =                          1.  Decompose numbers by place value.

         ↙↓↘         ↙ ↘                            2.  Group hundreds.  Group tens.  Group ones.

   700  60 2    40    3                          3.  Subtract hundreds.  Subtract tens.  Subtract ones.

(700 - 0) + (60 - 40) + (2 - 3)              4.  Watch out for negative differences.

      700       +    20     -     1  =            5.  Write and solve renamed equation.   

          720 - 1 = 719   
Here's the homework for the week...

Monday	Worksheet: Branching with renaming 100’s
Tuesday	Worksheet: Branching with renaming 10’s and 100’s
Wednesday	Worksheet: Word Problems
Thursday	No Homework due to assessment.

Language
In language students have been learning about collective nouns.  Collective nouns are nouns that name a group, for example a pride of lions or a gaggle of geese.  Each student picked a collective noun.  From there students created a slide that included the collective noun, an image of the collective noun, and a sentence using the collective noun.  Students shared their slides with me and I put them into one slide show.  This collective noun slide show has been viewed by the students of Room 17 and shared with Miss Garcia's class and both 3rd grade classes (who are also studying collective nouns) as well.

Writing

Research, research, research...our writing has focused on researching student selected animals.  Students have used their chromebooks and books

to fill out their notetakers.  The notetakers have the following topics--What the animal looks like, What the animal eats, The animal's life span, The animal's enemies and defenses, Where the animal lives, and Interesting facts about the animal.

Students are also keeping track of the resources (books and websites) they are using.  

Students are researching a variety of animals.  Everything from giraffes to geckos.  It's exciting to see the students working with a partner to research and then wanting to share their new facts.  I am learning a lot as well.
Just a reminder, since Valentine's Day falls on this Sunday; which also happens to be a long weekend, we will not be celebrating at school.  I'm hoping that each family will celebrate the holiday in a special way!

This week promises to be another busy week in Room 17.  I can't wait to see what it brings!!

Sincerely,
Anne Bloomfield