Thank you so much parents who took time out of your day to meet with us! Mrs. Edwards and I loved meeting new parents we haven't met, seeing parents again, and talking about your wonderful children! We are so blessed to have such awesome classes filled with kind, caring students. That is all thanks to you as parents!

It was very hard for the teachers to keep it a secret, but we managed to surprise a whole building of students! Abel Gonzalez was so impressed by our school and how many shirts we had purchased, that he decided to drive up here from Texas and meet us in person!! Mrs. Rooney, who planned the whole thing, had Skype up on the screen and pretended like it wasn't working. Then, Abel Gonzalez came out behind the curtain and surprised the students. It was truly great to see how excited they were that he came to see us. Abel talked to us about his life with Rheumatoid Arthritis, a disease that has affected his mobility and was supposed to leave him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He was able to overcome that obstacle as well as growing up in a very bad situation as a child in Chicago. He persevered and trained to be on the American Ninja Warrior television show. He made it after waiting for days to get a "walk on" spot. He has been an inspiration to many, and we were so lucky to get to hear his story and instill in us a "we can do it" attitude.

During the giving season our house has decided to make fleece tie blankets for those in need. We will be giving these blankets to Waukesha County families through the Christmas Clearing Council.

We will be collecting monetary donations to purchase fleece on Black Friday so that we can get a great deal. Our house will be pairing with our 5th grade buddies in Mrs. O’Hern and Donald’s classes to make the tie blankets. We ask, if you are able, to donate an amount of your choosing to put towards purchasing fleece. Our classes last year were able to make over 20 fuzzy blankets for children in need of warmth over the holidays. We would love to be able to donate the same amount if not more this year.

Thank you so much,

Liz and Lynsey

This week started off with a few lessons on multi-step word problems. I introduced three scenarios that students may come across when working on word problems. The first scenario is when there is too much information given. It can be very difficult to decide what steps to take to solve a word problem when there are so many numbers and words! We tried to focus on what the question of the problem is really asking us and deciding which information we could cross out to help us solve. The second scenario is when there is not enough information. We worked to try and find out which information we still needed in order to be able to solve the problem. Finally, we learned about hidden questions in multi-step word problems. With these types of problems, we usually have to answer a question first (first step) in order to be able to answer the true question in the problem. We learned how to find those hidden questions and determine which operation we needed to use to solve the problem in two or more steps.

We also worked on two-digit by two-digit multiplication using the area model and standard algorithm. The area model seemed to be a very smooth transition from two-digit by one-digit to now using two, two-digit numbers. The lesson went so great! I was amazed at how quickly they were able to master this skill. We transitioned then to solving it with the standard algorithm. This was a little more tricky and will probably require another day of teaching next week.

This week we learned about the muscular system. We were able to complete our second page in our interactive science notebooks. The students learned that there are three types of muscles: skeletal, smooth, and cardiac. Skeletal muscle is what we have attached to our bones in order to help us move. Smooth muscle is found in the stomach, intestines, bladder, etc. It allows us to digest food and breathe. The cardiac muscle is found in the heart and pumps blood throughout our body.

We read a book about muscles by Seymour Simon and were able to see, through pictures in the book, what the different types of muscle cells looked like under a microscope! We ended the week with a class favorite, Bill Nye the Science Guy. He does such a great job of explaining science concepts so children understand. The kiddos wrote a few facts they learned as they were watching and we discussed those in community circle.

Reading: For our character development studies, we started by looking at other character’s views on the main character. As always, the students had to come up with a theory on the character’s opinions and what clues made them think so from the book. We have a lot of good detectives who are great at finding the evidence to support their ideas. We also focused on finding the theme to a story. In order to find the theme we asked ourselves, “What is the life lesson the author wants to teach us?” This is a concept on our final test and one that most students were not able to answer on the pretest. Therefore, we will be spending a little more time on this concept. We started this week by reading Weslandia, and working with a partner to write theme options. The students also came up with a theme to our visitor, Abel’s message. We ended the week by looking at short cartoon films and identifying the story’s theme. The students finished the week by practicing backing up our theme with evidence from the book. Challenge the students to come up with the theme to a movie this weekend, making sure they can provide evidence to support their idea.

Writing: Our house is wrapping up the Realistic Fiction Writing Unit. We have a few finishing up on typing and peer editing. Others have begun illustrating a cover for their story, as well as finish editing with Mrs. Edwards. As I begin to read the students work for the final time, I am blown away by the great stories our creative minds have come up with. I look forward to sending home the binders after Thanksgiving for you to read your child’s creative (and interesting) stories.

Email: dewilyn@pewaukeeschools.org
Phone: (262) 701-5557