• Friday, November 20th
• Midterm reports are coming home today; please review, sign, and return on Monday.  
• Monday, November 23rd
• Crestwood's Support-a-Family continues, donate cleaning products this week.  
• Chess Club after school 
• Wednesday, November 25th-Friday, November 27th
• No school; Happy Thanksgiving! 
• Monday, November 30th
• Support-a-Family continues; please donate personal care/toiletry items.
• Chess Club after school 
• Academic All-Stars @ LHS @ 6:00 pm 
• Thursday, December 3rd
• Wacky Hair Day to benefit Support-a-Family; bring $1 to donate & participate.  
• Strings Concert @ 6:00 pm 
• Friday, December 4th
• Happy birthday, Aniya! 

• If you would like to order a new Flyer Family t-shirt for your child, please send $10 and your child's size to Miss D.  I will communicate your child's family name and color for an order that will be placed next week.  

..to my sweet friend, Mrs. Nicas, for coming to visit on Monday.  We loved taking time to exercise our creative muscles with painting, writing, stamping, snacking, sticking, and more.  

Mr. D.C. supervises while Crestwood students introduce their Veteran.  

Guest Veterans watch the introductions. 

We salute you, Ms. Winebrinner! 

Haylee and Christian listed things and people they are grateful for.  

Ivy & Aniya show off the flags they created.  

Students made book bags to take home.  

During Flyer Families this week, students pained ceiling tiles!  Mr. Dave is going to be working hard over the next few days to get these on display! 

Reader's Workshop

     This week, we've been practicing our reading fluency.  Fluent readers practice repeated reading until it sounds smooth.  They know many words by heart and use expression.  Fluent readers speak clearly and audibly.  We created fluency folders to house different poems, passages, songs, and speeches that we'll use to practice our fluency.

Monies & Abby practice repeated reading together. 

We used "Today I had a Rotten Day" by Ken Nesbitt to practice pausing for punctuation and phrasing words together. 

Writer's Workshop

     We learned so much about essays by studying one from a student who thinks we shouldn't watch too much TV.  We noticed she included a thesis, or main idea.  She also used transition words to share 3 supporting details.  Essays are written in first person, and the author is usually passionate about the topic.  Students used a box & bullets to plan an essay about an inspiring person.  

Math

     We worked SO HARD with two digit multiplication this week!  We know it's one of fourth grade's toughest skills and just takes a lot of practice to master, so that's what we did! Students did the area model and traditional method while playing Monkey Multiplication.  We also used clothespins to track multiples to keep their basic skills sharp.  Finally, we noticed that Rocket Math is really paying off; we are getting pretty quick (and accurate)!  

C.J. & Iqra show off their Face the Math exercises. We solve problems and follow the according directions to draw and color the picture.

Autumn, Sanni, Scarlet, & Jayden practice making multiples. 

Science

     Students began working with Mrs. Branding again this week and learned about the 4 layers of the Earth.  Ask your kiddo to describe each layer to you!  

• Monday, November 16th
• Crestwood's Support-a-Family continues, donate cleaning products this week.  
• Chess Club after school 
• Tuesday, November 17th
• Environmental Club after school
• Wednesday, November 18th
• Flyer Families will meet and paint their ceiling tile!  Wear Family t-shirts, please! 
• Early release @ 1:40 pm
• Girls Scouts @ 3:30 - 4:30 pm 
• Friday, November 20th
• October & November birthdays are celebrated in the cafeteria.  All students who purchase a school lunch will get a special treat! 
• 2nd Quarter midterm reports will be sent home.  

...for donating so many paper products to Crestwood Support-a-Family this week!  Students make a link in a paper chain for each item they bring, and that chain currently reaches from the office to second grade classrooms!  Wow!
...to Aniya's mom, Lieutenant Winebrinner, for your service in the Coast Guard and for taking time to answer some of our questions after the Veterans Day assembly on Friday.  We loved learning more about your responsibilities and are so grateful for all you do! Pictures from the assembly to come soon.  

This week during Class Meeting, we discussed honesty.  We shared reasons that it's sometimes tough to tell the truth.  We might be embarrassed, fear a negative consequence, or not feel super confident about we handled the situation.  Telling the truth is tough, but students expressed it's important to do so that we can building trust within our friendships and family relationships.  I have to say their wisdom on this topic blew me away.  I started thinking about the way I speak to kids when I know they're at a truth-telling crossroads.  I've found that, as a teacher, the best way to begin the conversation sounds something like this:  "I know one of the things kids and grownups have to work on all the time is being completely honest.  It's so important because it helps us learn to trust one another in the future.  I want to talk with you about something, and I'm hoping you'll choose to be completely truthful..."  I used that intro three times this week, and it worked like a charm!  Kids understood the importance of being transparent, and each of them showed a sense of pride for doing the right thing despite the previous mistake.  When it came time for consequences, they were willing to take responsibility.  Sure, these conversations take more time, and if you're anything like me, you might have to wait until you're in a calm state of mind to effectively communicate, but doing so gives kids a positive experience with 'fessing up to their wrongdoings.  The more positive experiences they have in doing this, the more likely they are to be truthful going forward.  Enough from me :), Here's a great article about how to teach honesty to kids.

• Monday, November 9th
• Crestwood's Support-a-Family continues, donate paper products this week.  
• Chess Club after school
• Girls on the Run after school 
• Wednesday, November 11th
• Veteran's Day assembly @ 2:30 pm
• Girls on the Run after school 
• PTO @ 6:30 pm - all parents welcome!
• Thursday, November 12th
• Dad's Club @ 7:30-8:30 pm, Smugala's - all dads welcome! 
• Friday, November 13th
• Ms. Meese's birthday!
• Scholastic book orders are due.  Parents, if you'd like to purchase books as a surprise holiday gift for your child, place your order online, shoot me an email letting me know to secretly hold onto the book when it arrives, and you can pick it up from school anytime between its arrival and our December break.  
• Jingles 4 Jammies - bring loose change to donate to Crestwood's Support-a-Family and wear pajamas.
• Dance-a-Rama @ 6:30-8:30 pm

...for all of the food items that have been donated as part of Crestwood's Support-a-Family.  My heart is full knowing that our school community takes care of each other.  

Reader's Workshop
     We focused on main idea of informational text this week.  The main idea is the overall topic of a text.  Authors use details throughout their writing that support the main idea.  They often give clues to the main idea in the title, headings, highlighted terms, beginning sentence, or ending sentence.  Students practiced reading short informational texts and recording the main idea and supporting details using a box & bullets graphic organizer.
     We also explored a new website, Capstone Library (username: crestwoodes, password: school).  Students enjoyed using this site because it offers a variety of high interest texts and will even read books aloud to students.

Math

     In Math, we continued studying different strategies for solving 2x1 digit multiplication problems.  Students practiced using models (rods & cubes), the break apart strategy, repeated addition, the traditional method, and the distributive property.  It's important we keep encouraging students to practice multiplication facts so that the next few weeks of more advanced multiplication and division feel manageable and not too frustrating.  At school, we played a new game, Zap it!, to work on our fluency.  At home, try doing practice verbally with your child.  If they are having trouble, help him/her make a t-chart of that set of facts and let him/her use as needed.  

Writer's Workshop
    We took a some time in between genre units of study to work on some of the basic skills of writing.  Students learned the structure of a complete paragraph, and we applied that format to write about our Halloween party.  We also completed some word ladders.  Word ladders are puzzles that require us to manipulate words by rearranging, deleting, and adding letters. We were able to harvest some new words during this activity as well:  dame, slosh, jot, and more.