SNOW BEAUTIFUL SNOW!!

This is my son, Ryan on one of our family ski days!! We love the snow, even when we have to shovel it!! This was a couple of years ago.

Housekeeping:
Monday, December 9, 2013: Early Release/PLC
Tuesday, December 17, 2013: Christmas Program rehearsal
Wednesday, December 18, 2013: Christmas Program performance at 9:30 AM and 1:30 PM
Thursday, December 19, 2013: Christmas Program performance at 9:30 AM
Friday, December 20, 2013: Class Christmas Party at 12:30 PM

English Language Arts:

Our story this week is Dogzilla by Dav Pilkey. Many of our writing activities for the next couple of weeks will be based on this story. It certainly is a winner. The students each year consistently choose this story as one of their favorites. These are some of the activities we have planned with this story over the next few weeks:
*Read Story several times
*Use a story organizer to write a sequel to the story. The story will need characters, setting, problem, solution, and a theme. The students will write their story and then use the keyboard to type it. Then the students will create a PowerPoint presentation with a minimum of 5 slides. The slides will talk about the characters, the setting, the problem, the solution and the theme. We will save the Powerpoint to their "H" drive so they will have it at school. This is a great project for the kids and gives them a lot of new technology experience.

Spelling List:
Please study the words sent home this week in the Friday Folder that go with the story of the week.

Math:
Multiplication, Multiplication, Multiplication!!! We have covered these multiplication factors:
The Ones
The Twos
The Fives
The Nines
The Tens

These are the easier multiplication facts we have been learning. Here are some strategies for multiplication:

• Understanding that multiplication is repeated addition
• Using circles and stars
• Making sets
• Using arrays to figure out the problem
• Using the hand trick for nines
• Memorizing!!    Memorizing does not do any good unless the students understand that multiplication is repeated addition

Science:

Last week we started our new Science Unit. The Unit focuses on Matter, Forces, and Energy. We will continue working on this Unit for several weeks.

Technology:

The Ellis third grade team recently received a full classroom set of laptops to help with the keyboarding requirement. Last week we were able to do a fun Science web quest about solids, liquids and gases. The city key communicators (business men and women from Chubbuck and Pocatello), will be in our classroom on Wednesday to observe how we are utilizing the technology at our school. Our classroom is one of the featured rooms!!

Question of the week:

Draw or illustrate the problem to solve.

Dominic has a bookshelf with four shelves. Each shelf holds 9 books. How many books does Dominic have. Please write a multiplication equation for the problem.

Dominic has 6 friends. He wants to give each friend an equal amount of books from his collection of 36 books. How many books will each friend get? Please write a division equation to show this problem.