It’s almost time for our Valentine’s Day party! The DeWitt/Edwards house is having our party on Tuesday, February 14th. We will have time in the afternoon for passing out valentines to classmates and enjoying some sweet treats! If your child would like to bring valentines to school, they need to make sure they have one for every student in the class. You can find our class list below for addressing valentines. Your child may choose to decorate a box to put their valentines in, but that is not required. If your kiddo does not wish to decorate a box, he/she can bring a bag to school to put the valentines in to take home. Please feel free to email me if you have any questions!

In our shortened week, we spent all of our class time working on interpreting remainders. What makes division word problems different from other word problems, is division word problems require you to interpret the remainders you may get as you solve. There are four ways we can interpret remainders, and we discussed each of the four in detail this week. Here are the four strategies:

*Drop It--The remainder is not used in your answer

*Use It--The remainder is added to you answer, or the remainder is your answer

*Round It--The remainder requires you to round your answer up

*Share It--The remainder is split into a fraction or a decimal.

Each of the strategies were practiced this week with a "Scoot" activity. I put the students into groups of four, and in those groups they rotated around the room to solve various word problems. They had to first of all decide what their remainder represented. Then, they had to choose a strategy to help them decide what to do with the remainder. Each student had a lot of exposure to all four different strategies, and we had fun doing it!

Our binders went home today and need to be signed and brought back by next week Monday. We have not completed Unit 3 yet, so there will be no final test in the binders. You will find their Unit 3 pretest and two quick quizzes.

Each group presented their Native American projects this week, and I was very impressed! Each group worked so hard throughout our days of research, and I could tell by their enthusiasm that they really enjoyed working on this project! We also studied and took our Chapter 3 test this week on early Native American groups in Wisconsin. The rubrics from their presentations will be in their binders as well as their Chapter 3 test and effigy mound activity.

Next Term, we will switch to science and focus on different forms of energy.

This week I was thrilled to be back to my 4th grade kiddos! The break away was a wonderful time to spend with my babies (full of earaches and the flu!), but I am well rested and ready to get back to work!

Our Poetry Unit came to an end this week. We looked specifically at how to read a poem for our Poetry Competition. The students began the week making sure they had their favorite poem to read. We had such a wonderful variety of serious, to funny, to sad, to motivational poems. They received a ‘coach’ who would help train them for the competition.

Throughout the week, the students watched videos of poets who gave us surburb examples to model from. We saw everything from a three year old to a 70 year old perform poetry. We took notes of what they did well in while performing the poetry, and things they could improve upon. Ask the students to find one of the poetry readings we watched on Youtube and talk to them about what makes it a great poetry presentation.

As we began performing infront of our large group of peers it was important to address the issue of our adrenaline kicking in and how we can calm our voice down from speeding up, and ways we can avoid looking right in the audience’s eyes, but still give the impression of good eye contact. Please be sure to share your “tools” of speaking in front of large groups, or experiences when you had to present something to a large group. Let them know how it went and how it made you feel! Some of our students are natural presenters! They may take after their mama or papa!

Friday we finished the week with our Poetry Competition- Round One, where the students competed against the peers in their own homeroom. Monday, the top ten from each classroom in our house will compete to be named “The Top FIVE!” Overall, we have sooo many gifted readers in the classroom. It was fun and exciting to see our students be little risk takers and knock all of our shoes off! Nice work boys and girls!!

Email: dewilyn@pewaukeeschools.org
Website: http://pewaukee.schoolwires.net/site/Default.aspx?PageID=1028
Phone: (262) 701-5557