February 22- 26

We had a busy first week back from break. The sun was out, some of the days, and our brains were in full gear ready to learn. Before we review last week's lessons, I want to remind you that parent-signed reading logs are due on Monday.

Social Studies- We had the privilege of watching a dynamic, solo performance combined with archival films that turned early 20th century immigration into a moving, personal journey. (I got that directly from the Living Voices website, and believe this to be the best description.) We traveled along with Leah, a fictional composite of many immigrants from that time period) as she and her family navigated the decision to leave Russia in hopes of a safer life in the United States where Leah finally realized her dream to go to school and to learn to read. We held our collective breath as Leah was hospitalized at Ellis Island with pink eye. Would she be allowed into the country to reunite with her family? She was.

Writing- We identified the main idea in the Living Voices presentation and used it to craft a topic sentence for a single paragraph summary of the presentation we saw. We used graphic organizers to help us create a bulleted list of details from the presentation to support our topic sentence. The challenge in this writing was wading through the wealth of interesting details to select only those that supported our topic sentences.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.3.1.A

Reading- We read The Albertasaurus Mystery , an informational text that follows the hunt for dinosaur fossils. We used details from the text to help us draw conclusions.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.3

Math- We are finishing up our math unit on addition and subtraction with regrouping. We applied our knowledge of these operations to story problems. Students took a practice test on Friday with instructions to study the test over the weekend in preparation for the real deal this week. 

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Click here to see the videotape of Mr. Lesco doing a celebratory dance with our brilliant mathematicians

Although our focus has been on addition and subtraction with regrouping, we are continuing to work on memorizing our multiplication tables up to 12 X 12. Having these facts memorized will be helpful when we begin our unit on fractions, and multiplying and dividing fractions. Five students have demonstrated mastery of their multiplication tables up to 12 X 12. These students celebrated with a strawberry swirl ice cream cup at snack time AND, a celebratory dance with Mr. Lesco!

Misc- Our classmates continue to amaze us all with their Pinterest worthy crafting skills. # 10 showed off his impressive skills with a sewing machine with this Seahawks pillowcase. Great job, #10!

We earned another Champion Movie Lunch this week. Students ate lunch in the classroom while we watched the first half of Nanny McPhee. We'll watch the rest of this movie at our next Champion Movie Lunch.

Our Shelter-in-Place drill took place during our regularly scheduled Choice Time, but we did have enough time for this.......

a gold and blue mani. Thank you to students #1, #2, and # 17 (17 took the picture.) Every teacher should be so well pampered.

Students, we watched the beginning of Nanny McPhee this week. Nanny McPhee says she has five lessons to teach the children, but what lessons they learn are entirely up to them. What do you think she means by this? What lessons are the children learning? 

Spelling Pre test Words