Happy November! We have a lot going on in our classroom! We've had birthdays, Halloween, books, wallets and all sorts of stuff going on! 

Students worked hard all week to fancy up and finish their published small moment piece. We will be celebrating all of our hard work with a writing celebration tomorrow. Students will have a chance to share their stories and any challenges or proud moments! Writing and any other work from this unit will be coming home next week with a letter. We are moving into Informational Writing for our next unit! 

We started our new math unit-Introduction to Multiplication. Students have been introduced to beginning concepts of multiplication. Our focus at the beginning of this unit is to help students see the relationship between multiplication and repeated addition. We look at our repeated addition equations and we recognize that we are adding a certain number a specific number of times. For example, 4+4+4 is the same thing as 4 x 3. Students have spent a few days figuring out how much groups of stamps cost! 

We can't forget about Halloween! We had a fun time using CANDY CORNS and pretzels as math manipulatives. Students solved word problems that involved getting witches to their parties and figuring out how many could fit on a broom. They loved it and showed such sophisticated mathematical thinking! 

We have concluded our reading unit and finished Stone Fox. The ending had us feeling A LOT of different emotions. The author really took a twist at the end of the story! Readers talked about the different emotions we have when we read. Before we move on to our Informational Reading Unit we had to celebrate all of our hard work! Students celebrated by creating their own bookmarks with strategies. Students added strategies that help them be a stronger reader. We are going to laminate them and they will be able to see their strategies each time they open their book! 

The next exciting thing  is our Social Studies project. Students have been studying Ellington, past and present. In this unit we also learned what it means to be an economist and we brainstormed some of the goods and services offered right here in Ellington! We have decided to open up a "Mock Economy" in our very own classroom. Students chose to work independently or in a group and they have pitched a business plan to me. Students are either offering a good or a service to their classmates. Each student is starting off with $100 in their fancy, homemade wallets! They will be required to pay rent to me each month and will have to pay to start up their business. There will be time when the market is open and students will be able to act as both producers and consumers. Students are extremely excited about this and I can't wait to see all the fun AND learning as we open our market each week! Ask your child about their good or service! 
Here they are making their wallets and planning their business. They came out SO good!