It's getting to be that time of year when we notice our school supplies are dwindling. Each child is bringing home a school supply list today. In class, we took inventory of how many supplies we had and highlighted the school supplies that we need more of. If you could gather more of the highlighted materials to send to school with your child, that would be great! That way, we should be prepared for the rest of the year! :)

This week, we worked on using area model for division. In our previous unit, the students became very comfortable using an area model to multiply. They were able to transition to dividing using area model with ease! Math Expressions stresses the importance of learning how each operation is related to it's inverse, so we started the week by practicing using area model with multiplication and what our division equation would look like on an area model. We spent a lot of time talking about how the dividend in a division problem is really the product in our area model if we did the inverse operation. By using a visual, the students are really able to grasp the idea of dividing, and we have had fun this week solving various problems!

We briefly discussed another method, called "Expanded Notation Method", and started to put it to practice. This method is very similar to the idea of the area model, however the process is done using the traditional division bracket. We will be getting to the point soon when each student will be able to choose which method allows them to be the most successful, and that will be the method they can use on their assessments.

Your child has been coming home with assignments these past two units that contain QR codes at the top of the page. If you have a QR code scanner on your tablet or phone (there are many free apps to choose from), you can scan the code to get to a short, instructional video on the lesson from that day. I created these videos for students who come home and realize while working on their homework that they don't remember how to do all of it. The videos are also for parents who would like to see how a problem is done before helping their child on the assignment. If you do not have a QR code scanner, I post all of the videos on my school webpage under "Links and Resources" as well.

We started reading Chapter 3 of our social studies textbooks. This chapter is all about Native American people who lived long ago in the area we now call Wisconsin. We are going to learn about five main groups of people: Paleo, Archaic, Oneota, Mississippian, and Woodland.

We started to discuss the Paleo people, who were the first group of people that we know of that lived in Wisconsin. We have been learning about what their homes looked like, what tools they used and made, what they ate, where in the state they lived, and why they are important to the history of Wisconsin. We ended the week learning about the Archaic people. These people lived at a later time period than the Paleo, and we can tell by the advances in their homes and tools they made. These people lived in a much warmer climate, so natural resources were more readily available to them.

We know that these people existed through archaeological digs that have uncovered spear points, tools, and other objects from people who lived here long ago. Our textbook has shown us some very interesting artifacts that have been found in the state of Wisconsin, including a mastodon skeleton!

Reading: This week we began our month-long unit on poetry. We talked about how poems are not only meant to be read, but also heard and seen. We learned that sometimes we need to infer (figure out) what is actually happening in the poem. For example - “White sheep, white sheep, on a blue hill” actually means the clouds in the sky. We practiced summarizing a poem as well as responding to a poem by writing our thoughts or connections we have.

We also had our second book club meeting. Please remind your child to bring his/her book to school on Friday so it can be used during the club meeting. The groups will meet again next Friday.

Writing: Writing will also be all about poetry this month. We started on Tuesday making lists of topics we might use for writing poems. On Wednesday we wrote a poem as a group entitled “In January.” We then moved on to writing patterned poems and an action verb poem. We have spent a lot of time talking about parts of speech and about our word choice. Poets have to be very careful about the words they choose to use in their poems since poems tend to be much shorter than prose. Choosing just the right word makes the poem so much more meaningful and descriptive. Do you have a favorite poem or poet? Please share with your child!

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