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Division

Mid last week we started working on simple division with remainders (1 divisor with 2 dividends). 

Students used cuisenaire rods as a tool to visualize the math problems. I also started asking students to start thinking, " What times what gets me the closest to ___ , without going over?" I want students to start thinking of their multiplication facts/fact families to solve division  problems , for cuisenaire rods are a tool to help us out at the beginning of this unit, but not to be relied on. 

We'll continue simple division before moving on to 4th grade standard/expectation---long division , with and without remainders, with 4 dividends.

Beginning of division and fantasy

On Monday we began our new math unit of division by doing simple problems (1 divisor and 1/2 dividends  with no remainders) using cuisenaire rods. 

We started our new reading unit in Monday as well. Fantasy is our genre for the next several weeks and students will be reading chapter books by Roald Dahl. To get acquainted with this new genre, we read three picture books and decided if it was realistic or fantasy. If the book had talking animals, magical powers, or events that just could not happen, it was fantasy. 

Region Project

During the past several weeks, we have been learning about the states and capitals of the remaining 4 regions of the USA with facts about each region. 

This past week, students chose a region they would like to research a bit more. With their partner, or small group, the boys and girls spent 4 days researching using textbooks and websites. 

Now, they are working on typing up their research. In the next couple of days, the class will be putting their projects  together. Each team will have a chance to present their project on either the 17th or 18th. 

Leeza hero stories

The past couple of weeks, students have been working on creating and editing a story about Leeza , my dog, being a hero. This project was inspired by our small reading book group book we read, My Dig My Hero by Betsy Byars. 

The stories are going to be sent to a publisher to be published into a real book! This idea was inspired from third grade last year when Ms. Grube's class published The Adventures of Henry, but by the time I came upon this cool idea, the company had said it was too late. 

Students have been working very hard on their stories. They are at their revising stage to go onto their final draft. The company gives us 1 page for the final so it has to be exactly how we want it! Eekk!! More information regarding if you would like to order a book will be sent as an email a bit later on. 

Word Problems

On Monday we started our new math unit---Word Problems!

We began by brainstorming key words we remembered from third grade and journaling them in our math journals. 

Then, we learned a little song to help us break down a word problem.

After, we learned a little TIPS to help further assist us understanding word problems and being able to solve them. 

We'll be  working on word problems for the next couple of weeks. We started with addition and we'll move into subtraction, multiplication, and multi- step. 

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!! Thank  you very much for all the donations for our feast! We REALLY appreciated it!! Students had a great time hosting our third grade friends, eating the delicious food, chatting, watching Charlie Brown Thanksgiving, and giving their new friends a friendship bracelet they created. I, however, in the bussle of everything forgot to take a picture 😔!!!! 

We started off our day reading with our book buddies their book The ABC's of Thanksgiving. Fourth graders helped the first graders come up with with a sentence for the letter Y and Z. Then, the 4th graders made matching friendship bracelets for their first grade buddies. 

Students had the opportunity to do a "Happy Thanks-grossing" activity. They needed to come up disgusting ingredients for a meal to serve on Thanksgiving. Ask them about it, some were wicked gross.