The BFG

The Esprit team is currently reading The BFG by Roald Dahl as part of the Global Read Aloud.  The Global Read Aloud is an opportunity for students all over the world to read the same book and connect in a variety of ways through the book we are all reading.  Team Esprit will be connecting with a third grade class in Illinois to share our ideas and understandings about The BFG and learn more about their community.
In Math, we are beginning a new unit that will help us develop a deep, conceptual understanding of multiplication.  We will be working with problems that help students think about equal groups and begin to use multiplicative reasoning.  Students will begin by examining various arrays that facilitate the use of repeated addition and skip-counting and move them toward multiplication strategeis.
During Reader's Workshop, we have continued to read Stone Fox and have been learning about different strategies we can use to tackle hard words.  We are talking about chunking words, thinking about the story, asking, "Does it look like a word I know?", "Does it sound like a word I know?", trying out different words, and searching for clues to figure out what words mean.  We will continue to work on a variety of strategies that support our reading comprehension.
In Writer's Workshop, we are now writing opinion pieces about "noteworthy" people.  We are writing to get others to pay attention to people, places, things or ideas that they might otherwise walk right past.  We are learning about ways to address our audience directly through our writing and practicing using those strategies in our writing.
Miss Deb's class enjoyed a Hands On Nature lesson this week about seeds.  We learned about different kinds of seeds and how their design helps them to travel in different ways so they can grow in a new place.  A big thank you to our Hands On Nature parents for this fantastic learning experience! Miss Niles' class will be learning about this in a couple weeks.

We look forward to meeting with everyone for parent/teacher conferences this week.  Please check your time on the Esprit google site to make sure you arrive for your scheduled conference time so we can have plenty of time for our conference with you.
Have a terrific weekend,
Deb and Jenn