Week of January 4th 2016

Welcome Back to Back to School Everyone,

     I hope that everyone had a wonderful winter break!! I know that I enjoyed getting to spend extra time with my family and friends with no alarm clock going off every morning.

     This week looks to be very calm according to calendar, but there is lots of things coming up in the next few weeks. Please take a look at the calendar for important dates.

     We will spend the beginning of the week reviewing the strategies that the students have learned for division (multiplying up, array model, area model, and partial quotients). The majority of the students like partial quotients the best followed by the area model. Students will be free to choose the strategy that they like the best to solve problems. On Wednesday we will begin working problems that are multi-step and require multiple operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, division) to solve. 
For example: Jack wants to buy the same number of hats for 3 of his friends. He has $57 dollars, and each hat costs $5. What is the largest number of hats that Jack buys for each friend? How much money does Jack have left?
These types of problems require students to really think through the steps of problem solving. 
1. Understand the problem
2. Devise a plan to solve the problem
3. Carry out the plan 
4. Look back at the question. Does my answer make sense?

     Students will need to complete their math rotations projects this week. All projects are due on this Friday 1/8.

     This week in science we will begin a new chapter. In chapter 6 we will learn about force and motion. Since chapter six is so short (two lessons) we will only spend about 1 week on the material.