Charlie Brown Thanksgiving

Team Wilkinson is thankful for Lunch Bunch with good friends!!!

Division Strategies

Here are a few short videos detailing the strategies that we have been using in this unit.  Our test is Tuesday November 26--students may choose the strategy that works best for them on the test, they will not be required to use one strategy or the other.

Long Division (no remainder)
Long Division (with remainder)
Partial-Quotient
Partial Quotient (LearnZillion)
Division using Extended Multiplication and Friendly Numbers - this is similar to our PQ strategy and emphasizes the use of multiplication in division

We have also looked at interpreting remainders in real-world settings.  If your child needs more understanding, here is a LearnZillion that we looked at in class.  The main idea we are communicating is that sometimes a remainder can be overlooked (for instance, if all students are to receive 2 cookies and the cafeteria made a few extra) and sometimes we need to account for it (e.g.: we decided it wouldn't be fair to leave someone at school for a field trip, we would need to increase the number of buses we request; or that we would play an extra round of a video game in order to score a high score instead of simply falling short of our goal!).  

November Update

We have had a very busy month, though Ms. Wilkinson has been under the weather and unable to update the blog.   Here is a summary of our learning:

The Science Guy shared some his friends to show us how some animals adapt to their surroundings.   This was a great preview for our Plants & Animals units in Science...

Yes, that is a boa constrictor...in our cafeteria!

We had the opportunity to touch this snake to understand how it's texture assists its ability to grip objects (such as prey or branches, to find shelter). 

Some of the reptiles and amphibians were unfortunately "off-limits", so we could only use our eyes to learn. 

Team Wilkinson also enjoyed the use of Kenwood's iPad cart in Math and Literacy this month.    Here we are performing research for our Q&A reports on weather phenomena that interest us:

And finally, Team Wilkinson earned another celebration--this time we rewarded ourselves with PJ Day!!  Our class shows great leadership in the hallways and follows classroom expectations...so celebrations are frequent for this group :)

When we return from Winter Break, Team Wilkinson will focus on earning compliments in the areas of Teamwork, Leadership and Communication specifically.  We would love your suggestions on how we can celebrate these goals!

The Water Cycle

Today we talked more in-depth about the Water Cycle and how we see it in our everyday life.  Here is a link to an interactive site that may help your child with vocabulary.  This is especially helpful if you are a visual learner :)

Our Weather & the Universe test is scheduled for Friday!

Weather Forecasting 101

Today we had a very special visitor, who came to get us pumped up for our next project.   Lori Farmer, a meteorologist with WDRB Fox 41, introduced us to the study of weather data and explained how she used this information to predict the weather.  Team Wilkinson is now ready to start forecasting on their own!

             What is a meteorologist?

A very special THANK YOU to Mrs. Farmer for her words today!  

Reading Leaders

We had a great morning with our Reading Buddies in Mrs. Beaty's class.  Team Wilkinson showed great leadership by proactively picking good reading spots and synergizing so each student could read aloud.  It's been a few weeks since our last visit and we can tell they are working hard to improve their reading skills!!