The 39 Clues

We have started our first online book club with reading of The 39 Clues.  Students go onto Edmodo and post questions and comments with students from other schools around the country.  We will be making a character chart to keep track of the many characters and clues as we read.  We are very excited about this fabulous way to hold a book club!

Happenings in Room 303

Writing - Students have been hard at work drafting their mystery stories.  This week the focus has been on strong leads, synonyms for "said", dialogue and dialogue tags. Students will be bringing their drafts home so please ask them to read their stories, and see if you can figure out "who dunnit" by their clues!
Math - We are wrapping up Unit 2 with our unit assessment on  Friday, 11/12.  This unit included review of several multiplication strategies, including partial sums and the lattice methods.  Students also used these methods, as well as the traditional method, for multiplying decimals and whole numbers.  Place values and number sentences have also been a strong focus during this unit.
Reading - This weeks reading comprehension strategy has been visualizing.  I read several short passages, and several books to the students and they drew what they heard.  Their drawings needed to relate to the text to show accuracy and understanding of the author's intent.  We had some amazing representations and an "aha" moment as the students realized that we all see and hear very differently.
Milkweed -  Hopefully the students have shared our read aloud book, Milkweed.  It is by Jerry Spinelli, one of our favorite authors.  It is an historical fiction that retells the events of the Warsaw Ghetto during World War 2, and the Holocaust.  It is narrated by an 8 year old boy, and the main themes are friendship, identity, and family.  We have had very intense and relative discussions regarding the experiences of the main character, and have made many connections to slavery.  Please discuss this with your child, and have them tell you about our powerful visual inquiry we did on a sculpture of Dr. Janus Korczak.

For his exhibition project, one of our students, Renardo Whittler, has been researching the Ronald McDonald House of Detroit.  As part of his project, he is collecting pop can tabs.  These tabs will be turned in for supplies for the House.  Please support Renardo as he builds  contributions to the children at the Ronald McDonald House.

Exhibition Sign-up

Exhibition Sign Up