The basics

Our day began as usual with our morning procedures followed by i-time and gym. Mr. Nick and Miss Lauren hung out with the kids during gym today to try and get to know them better. In morning meeting, we shared our favorite sports to either play or watch and then played category challenge with sports as the category. Sarah won with 19!! (although jumping, catching and throwing aren't true sports...) Mr. Nick came in next with 17! We finished up with the Pledge of Allegiance. Before reading Wonder, we discussed that although we love reading digitally using Epic!, we need a balance of paper books too because the selection at the library and in our classroom is much better when it comes to quality of literature, then Epic! So, we read, The Children Who Loved Books to show how exciting paper books can be too. In Wonder, there was a big turning point! Auggie and Jack were cornered and bullied by a couple of 7th graders-Auggie especially. But, guess what?! Amos, Miles and Henry (Julian's best buds) came to his defense!! They "guarded" him and made sure he was safe. We should finish the book tomorrow or Friday and we're a little sad for it to end. After reading independently, we worked more with main idea and then worked to develop our characters in Writer's Workshop. We first used Auggie as our example and identified both external and internal characteristics for him. After lunch, recess and quiet time, we continued our work with timelines and practiced making one of some events from my life. We began our math workshop with a 5-minute basic multiplication facts test. After we found out how many we knew, we set a goal for ourselves for next week when we'll take it again. Ask your kiddo why it's important to know these facts. Then, we practiced to secure our understanding of multi-digit multiplication. We've discussed two different strategies: partial products and area model. Most kids like the area model best, I think.