Merry Christmas!

Eeeeek! Mr. Grass sent us cool stuff from Bahrain!

We each got a letter and a yummy bag of chips. They are Lay's, but are a flavor we don't have: French Cheese! We thought they were great! He also sent us two coins, a brochure, and a newspaper! So cool!

Poetry: Work in Progress

Poets Choose Words Carefully.

Here's the millionth draft of my poem about our fish tank friends. I want to revise some of the words so it's funnier and more clever. What should I change? After we do this together, try it with your poems.

We're fancy.

Last night we got all dressed up for our Christmas concert. Look!

Meet Voldemort!

We have a new fish in our tank--Voldemort! If he survives, that means there's no disease left in our tank and we will be able to add more fish soon. If he dies--tank overhaul! You can see Claws the Crawfish at the front and center of the tank and Voldemort the Hybrid Bluegill at the back lower right corner. Send some good luck to Voldemort...he's gonna need it!

Learning to sound like characters.

We've been learning that one way to make our reading lives better is to sound like characters when we read, whether we're reading aloud or in our minds. Authors use punctuation to help guide our voices to sound like characters. Here we are doing Readers Theater.

Scholastic Book Club

Hi everyone! Scholastic Book Club has a super website for you to order inexpensive, quality books from. I just added a button to take you there with just one click on the right side of our blog. I've been sending home book order flyers in the past, but the website is much better because it will tell you the level of the books available. When you place an order on the website, I am automatically notified of it so I can process it for you, AND our classroom earns FREE BOOKS! How great is that?! So please, order away, and a big thanks to those who have already ordered books. So far this year because of your orders, we have probably added 25 books to our classroom library. That's pretty great!

Let punctuation guide your voice.

What We're Doing for our Thanksgiving

We will be celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow with our friends and family. Here's what we said we'll do:

• have a big meal with our families
• eat turkey
• play games with our cousins
• visit our families that don't live so close
• have some stuffing
• eat pie
• have special "holiday" foods we don't always get to eat, like pumpkin pie and grandma's special rolls

Happy Thanksgiving from Northern Indiana!

You might not love reading.

We've been talking lately about how reading can get us what we want someday. Sometimes we must discipline ourselves to read when we just don't feel like it. Really getting into a book is like when Harry Potter crosses from the Muggle world into the wizard world via Platform Nine and Three Quarters...we can open a book and plunge in to another world entirely! Allowing ourselves to really be IN the story can make a huge difference in making ourselves read. It makes reading soooooo much better, even on those days when we just don't feel like reading.

Today when we read, we became...

Thinking like poets

Poets look at normal, everyday things in a fresh new way...with their imaginations. These are some of the ordinary things we thought about in fresh, new ways today.

^^ News for the Week ^^

This week has flown by around here! We:

• began studying poetry. We're learning that poets don't think like other people.
• read to Mrs. Overman even more than normal, since she is testing us on our reading. That prompted her to remind us about why we read.
• talked a lot about how reading can help us reach our goals as grownups.
• learned that it's okay that we don't always LOVE reading, but we do it because it's good for us.
• practiced checking ourselves for understanding as we read.
• learned to add double-digit numbers AND regroup (carry).
• had fun learning about assembly-line production and unit production during Junior Achievement.

Things to keep in mind:

• Thanksgiving Break is November 28 and 29th.
• Please send a heavy coat with your child. It's chilly and we're outside nearly every day.
• Please sign and return the bottom part of your student's report card and the manila envelope as soon as possible. 

Happy weekend!

Junior Achievement Donut Factory

We did an experiment to see if unit production (one person makes a product from start to finish) is more efficient than assembly line production (a team of people works together to make a product).

We discovered that assembly line production works better!

Poetry Inquiry: What makes a poem?

Our challenge: figure out what a poem is or has. What makes a poem? More to come soon!