Words Their Way, Jana Dillon Visits, a Subtraction Shortcut, and Pen Pal Letters

This week students were introduced to a new spelling program called Words Their Way. A pretest helped determined each student's developmental spelling level. In class and at home, practice sorting and writing the words will help students internalize the spelling patterns.

A big focus in Topic 3 has been regrouping. It is essential that students check their calculations for careless errors when adding and subtracting. Further, keywords like in all, total, and how many more can become useful tools when determining the appropriate operation to execute.

Check out the Math page on the blog for a peek at a shortcut for subtracting across zeroes. The shortcut has mathematicians interpret 705, for example, as 70 tens and 5 ones, simplifying the regrouping process by one step. See our anchor chart below for three examples.

Thanks to the generosity of the Rockland Education Foundation, we were honored to host children's book author and illustrator Jana Dillon to Memorial Park on Tuesday. The third and fourth graders enjoyed a Writer's Workshop presentation that focused on a creative writing story with a superhero as the main character.

Another exciting debut this week was the arrival of our first batch of pen pal letters! Throughout the year we will be corresponding with third graders in Pennsylvania. We used a two- column note organizer to brainstorm our thoughts and ideas. Ask your child what he learned about his pen pal!

Our Social Studies Family Learning Project is due November 8. In class, student historians chose a famous Massachusetts figure to research. Students will make brief presentations dressed as their famous figure while sharing important facts about the person using five notecards. Details can be found on the project letter sent home Thursday as well as by clicking on the Social Studies page of the blog.

Multiplication is coming up next, but students should continue to practice their basic addition and subtraction facts often! As students will soon learn, multiplication is a form of repeated addition!