It's hard to believe, but we're starting our 5th unit in Math.  We have worked hard to learn place value, how to count money (working in the school store is great practice) and make change, round, and add larger numbers with regrouping (carrying).  Now we are ready for subtraction.  Most of the students understand the concept of regrouping, but are still making basic computation errors due to counting on fingers instead of memorizing the facts.  Mrs. Nolan plays an around the world flashcard game to help motivate the children and make learning facts fun.  Practice at home would be great!

We have read so many great stories and the students are learning to be more thoughtful and CAREFUL readers, especially READING DIRECTIONS.  We will need some more practice with this.  The Reading and Writing Unit Test was challenging, and we worked to teach the children strategies for test taking such as underlining key words in the QUESTION so they could look back into the story to find the answer, which is also underlined or highlighted.  This basic strategy will help them in all subjects throughout their education.  Other strategies taught and practiced are to read ALL choices before picking an answer, and to cross out the "bad" choices and carefully consider the sensible ones.  This might seem intuitive to us, but these need to be taught and reviewed frequently to become automatic.

Students have written some wonderful letters and will soon be writing to the Rensselaer Elks, who gave every child their own personal dictionary to use at home.  We were surprised that several children had no idea what their home address was, which was why we gave that as a homework assignment.  All children should know their home address as a matter of safety.  Ask your child-some still haven't committed it to memory.

                              KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!