End-of-Week Update, 11/14

Congratulations to all of our Room 20 Student Council candidates -
Conor, Isabella, Destiny, Shaw, Joey, Tanaya, Anurag
Audria, Alex, Dora, Kelli, Emily, and Emma!
Also, big congratulations to Audria for being elected as Room 20's representative!

What we've been up to:

It's been a busy couple of short weeks in Room 20!

In math, we've been working on multiplication a lot.  We have been multiplying by multiples of 10 and 100 and using our basic facts to solve trickier multiplication problems all the way up to 4-digit by 1-digit and 2-digit by 2-digit products!  We've been using the area model (see the photos below) to illustrate our multiplication work with base-10 blocks and shaded grid paper.  We've also used the Windows Method to show our partial products.  We're getting pretty quick and accurate at multiplying big numbers!  Now we're working on avoiding careless errors (like copying mistakes or addition mistakes), practicing our facts (through 12 x 12!), and reading and thinking about multiplication word problems carefully before solving.  Our multiplication test is this Friday!  Mrs. Adams says that the biggest thing we can do to prepare is to practice our facts!

In writing, we've been working on our fiction pieces!  We chose seed stories, developed our characters, identified the theme of our stories, and planned the scenes in our stories using a comic strip!  We storytold our drafts to a Mix-It-Up partner and we're ready to start drafting soon!

In reading, we've been really busy with finishing up The Sisters Grimm.  We've been working on collecting more evidence for our theme posters and we read the last chapter with Miss Farrell's class on Friday!  We loved that Granny Relda and Mr. Canis were alive, that Daphne and Sabrina's parents are alive, and that Puck is moving in (even though Sabrina isn't too happy about that).  We started our latest "Mix-It-Up" technology project with Miss Farrell's class.  We're cooperatively writing scripts of our favorite scenes from The Sisters Grimm using Google Doc's.  Since all the group members can type in the same document at the same time, we can write the script together!  We can't wait to finish writing our scripts so we can start practicing and perform them soon.  Stay tuned!

In social studies, we've been continuing our study of Canada - including the five different climate zones in Canada, some important industries in Canada's economy, and the First Nations (Native American) tribes of Canada.

One more full week until Thanksgiving and we're going to be really busy!

What's coming up:

• Haffenreffer Museum presentation - Thursday, 11/20.  Be sure to ask your Room 20 student all about this first of four outstanding enrichment programs brought to 4th grade by the PCC!
• Multiplication test will be on Friday, 11/21.  Use the purple study guide (2-sided) to help your child prepare for the test.  Mastery of basic multiplication facts is essential!  Keep up that fact practice at home - at least 10 min a day!

Spotlight on Tyler!

Room 20 was so  happy to hear about Tyler's big news - he has a new furry family member, Fenway!  Fenway is a labradoodle puppy and we think he's extremely adorable.  We can't wait to hear all about the fun adventures Tyler and his family will enjoy with their new pet!

Welcome, Fenway!

Student Council Speeches!

Election Day isn't until Wednesday for JFK Student Council candidates, but the campaign speeches happened today and Room 20 students have one very difficult decision to make!

Check out the videos of Room 20 candidates below!  We are so proud of all of them for having the bravery and determination to run for Student Council.  There may be only one winner of the election, but everyone who gave a speech today was a winner for putting themselves out there!  Great job today - Dora, Destiny, Anurag, Shaw, Audria, Joey, Conor, Emma, Tanaya, Alex, and Kelli!

End-of-Week Update, 10/31

A Mixed-Up Halloween with our friends from Room 21!

Happy Halloween from Room 20!  We had an incredible week that ended with an awesome Halloween!

In math, we worked hard to learn and practice traditional addition and subtraction, even with zeros in the top number!  We took our Topic 4 test on Thursday and tried to avoid the "WATCH OUT" careless errors that we listed earlier last week.

In writing, we've started thinking about our fiction stories!  We watched a Pixar short video called "Partysaurus Rex," to see an example of a "seed" fiction story.  If we watched "Toy Story," that would be a watermelon, for example.  We wrote "back-of-the-book blurbs" for "Partysaurus Rex" that included the setting, characters, and the problem.  In the computer lab, we typed them up as our first Google document!

We've been reading more of The Sisters Grimm as well!  We started working in small groups based on what we think the theme of the book is (from what we've read so far).  We have groups for the themes of "courage," "determination," "perseverance," and "kindness."  We're collecting evidence from the book as we read to prove that we've chosen the best theme!  We can't wait to read more next week.

For Halloween, we celebrated by having a short Mix-it-Up Day with our friends from Room 21.  We completed some Halloween math activities and worked on following written directions to create origami masterpieces!

Next week is November!  We can't wait to see what we'll do in the next week / month!