Room 114's Classroom Blog! : January 1, 2017

Happy New Year!!! I hope everyone had a fun and relaxing holiday and vacation! I know that this new year will bring lots more learning fun in Room 118! Happy 2017!!! :)

Thank You, Thank You, THANK YOU!
I can't thank you enough for the INCREDIBLY thoughtful and VERY generous class holiday gift! It was beyond kind of you to think of me during such a busy, hectic and crazy time of the year! Your super creative, winter themed gifts will help me to be the warmest and most relaxed teacher at Boyden School! Thank you so much again!!!

Holiday Celebration!
A HUGE thank you to all of the families that came in to help out with our holiday craft/game celebration before vacation! The children had an amazing time! We truly could not have had such a fantastic party without you! Thank you so much Mrs. Kirby, Ms. McKenna, Mr. Tillinghast, Mr. Wyzanski and Mrs. Zuker!

Math
This week we will continue to practice the concepts presented in Topic 8 of our math curriculum which focuses on adding two-digit numbers! Throughout this unit students will be exposed to many strategies for adding two-digit numbers such as using ones and tens models and a number line. Students will also learn a computation strategy called Partial Sums. After attending several math professional development workshops last year, it has been determined that the way we have been taught to solve two-digit addition problems is truly not the best way for students to learn how to add! Instead we will be using the Partial Sums method! I have provided a picture of this strategy below! Please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions that you may have!

Science
Before vacation we participated in two Mystery Science experiments! One experiment answered the question, "If you floated down a river, where would you end up?" and the other activity focused around the mystery, "Why is there sand at the beach?" Ask your child to tell you what they know about rivers and sand to see what they learned!

Literacy
This week in Literacy we will be reading the story, Dear Juno by Soyung Pak. Through reading this story we will continue to discuss the unit question, “What does it mean to be creative?” We will also address the weekly question, “How many ways can we communicate?” This week we will also be discussing the genre of Realistic Fiction, practicing reading words with long o (o, oa, ow), applying the comprehension skill of drawing conclusions and utilizing the comprehension strategy of visualizing.

Sharing our holiday traditions with the class!