* Pajama Day will take place on Friday, December 20th. We will also have our classroom Christmas party and a visit from Santa Leo on that day.

* We appreciate your student having all of their winter gear every day at school. We go outside for recess and PE, so having all of their gear is essential. Thank you for your efforts.

Great news, we have again achieved our classroom attendance goal for the month of November! Let's keep up the good work! 😁

• We continue to explore Outer Space as part of our reading and science units! We just finished reading One Giant Leap and have now started the book Moonshot. Both texts provide a different perspective about the Apollo 11 moon landing and include nonfiction information, combined with a ton of figurative language. In the coming week we will be learning about the phases of the moon, with a side of Oreo cookies! We'll be posting photos of this fun lesson. (A few of our second-grade friends have been joining us for these ELA lessons.)
• Spelling - We will be skipping around in our spelling book to best learn the spelling patterns that we find most challenging. Also, in case you were wondering, our spelling grades not only include how students spell on spelling tests and assignments, but also how they spell in their everyday writing. It's important to carry over what we learn in spelling class to everything we write in other subject areas.
• We just finished two weeks of language arts learning with our 5/6 friends. This figurative language unit taught us all about similes, metaphors, personification, onomatopoeia, hyperbole, and idioms. These skills will help us to increase our understanding of reading higher level texts.

We love learning and engaging in STEM activities. Our students are currently engaged in creating a Google Slides project on the topic Outer Space. This project will allow them to create a slide show for the Sun, Moon, Planets, Asteroids, Black Holes, and NASA. Once they finish their slide shows they will give an oral presentation to their classmates. Check out their scoring rubric, which provides them with the expectations for their final project.

If time allows, our other STEM projects this month will include some kind of challenge with elves and a green screen! Keep your eyes out for photos of these fun projects.

We have begun our multiplication units for both grade levels.

Third Grade - The Twelve Basic Facts! We will be learning and memorizing our facts from 0-12! Check out the websites below, if you would like to support your student in learning their facts. Memorizing these twelve facts will be a great benefit as we learn higher-level math skills.

Fourth Grade - We have begun learning multi-digit multiplication. We will learn the standard algorithm, area model, and partial product of multiplication. Our students have already gotten off to a great start with this skill. If they are ready, then we may begin long division earlier than anticipated.