End of April

Dear Families and Friends,

Over the past few weeks the students have begun to really grasp the concepts of multiplication and division.  The class has been answering word problems that relate to the real world, thus understanding why division and multiplication are important tools to have throughout life.  The past week and this week we are focusing on division.  The students have been using lots of visuals to help them solve the problems.  Below are two examples:

Here Giovanni is solving 20 divided by 10 and Chalaya is showing the class how she solved 20 divided by 5.  The great thing about the way the class is developing their understanding of these concepts is that to the students the symbols and equations come second.  They are more concerned with going deeper into what multiplication and division really mean.

Here is a pattern that Noah observed after working on the division problems for the day.  It was interesting to listen to him explain his observation to the class.  He explained that although there were different numbers of books or shelves, depending on the problem, they were still being grouped with the same values.  So if there are 4 groups of 5 or 5 groups of 4, you still get the same total which he then related back to multiplication.

As last week was Earth week the class talked a lot about what we could all do to help heal our planet and how we can get our great ideas across to others.  The kiddos made posters expressing their ideas of what or what not to do to help the planet.  As we discussed other ways to get the word out about recycling, reusing, and reducing Chalaya came up with an idea to write to the President to see what he was doing to help the Earth.  The kids loved the idea so we are currently in the process of writing letters to President Obama.  Some students are asking him what he is doing and some are telling him what they are doing.  We are all hoping very much that he will write us back!

This week's words come from something that I have observed in the classroom.  Often students use the past tense of irregular verbs inccorectly.  Many students say "I drawed..." or "It growed...," so this week we will be focusing on irregular past tense:

know - knew

draw - drew

take -took

go -went

make - made

get - got

grow - grew

UPCOMING EVENTS:

CSTs continue this week.  We will be testing Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  Please make sure your student gets plenty of sleep and a nice healthy breakfast.  We finished part I of the math last week and will be trading off; math, language arts, math language arts.  This will hopefully help the kids not burn out on any one subject. 

May 17th we are going to the San Diego Zoo.  If you would like to chaperone there is a sign up sheet outside of the classroom.  The first 6 volunteers will get in for free, after that it is $10 per chaperone.  If you have a Zoo Pass it will also be free.  There is no cost for the students.