Friday, January 29

Congratulations Needham Science Bowl!  Needham ranked 6th in the state!!  How impressive!!  And, how exciting that many of those team members will now be joining our MATH Bowl team.  We are glad to have you!

MATH: This week was a lot of HARD WORK!  We were working hard to learn Partial Quotient Division, then added in rotations and angles.  We learned all about the pieces of a circle and how to measure them with a half-circle protractor and a full-circle protractor.  Thank goodness we took lots of notes in our Math Notebook. We will begin next week by reviewing what we learned and adding on coordinate pairs.  Tuesday ans Wednesday we will continue to review and practice.  Thursday will be our Unit 6 Test. It will be hard, but I am sure the kids will do well; because, they are good at hard work!

HOMEROOM:  Next week begins February, the month of honoring friendships.  It is tradition to have a Friendship Party in TEAM33. Our friendship party will be February 12th at 1:30.  If you would be willing to coordinate the party, please let me know as soon as possible and I will send you the list of volunteers that signed up at the beginning of the year.

It is also tradition in TEAM 33 that we use Valentine's day as an opportunity to practice our signature.  I will be sending home signature practice sheets early next week. Students will be asked sign each valentine in cursive. (They are not required to write their friends names in cursive.)  We have 21 friends in our classroom, and I will also send home a class name list.

Monday, January 25

Today was a normal, everyday, nothing too big, kind of day - and I LOVED IT! We reviewed our lesson from last week on the PARTIAL QUOTIENT ALGORITHM and started talking about the different uses of remainders.  If you have not watched the PARTIAL QUOTIENT ALGORITHM video yet, I highly recommend it.  The kids are doing great with it, but if you have never seen it before it can through you for a bit of a loop.  Today we also took some time to work in our Fact Fluency program.  If you want to have a conversation with your child about their school day, ask them how they are doing on their Fact Fluency Quizzes.  This HANDOUT will let you know the meaning of each level.  All students should be working in Green or above.

Tuesday, January 19

The Petro Family is in our Thoughts and Prayers! 

It felt so good to be back with my team today!  The end of last week was just a little too crazy for my tastes.  My daughter sprained her ankle while dancing late Wednesday evening and wasn't allowed to put weight on it all day Thursday, so of course I took off work on Thursday.  She did pretty well Thursday, but was in severe pain Thursday night due to a problem with the splint, so I took Friday off and took her back to the doctor.  He got everything fixed up and now she is doing much better.  Just needs crutches for about a week and several weeks of taking it easy at dance.  

Today it felt like forever since I had seen my TEAM33 friends and my heart was immediately warmed with all their smiles and hugs. (I still say there isn't a better job out there!)  As happy as I was to see the team, it was still a sad day for TEAM33.  Early this morning, with Brody's permission, we shared the sad news about his mom and our friend, Mrs. Petro.  Mrs. Deeter shared an insightful book and then we allowed the students to just talk about how they felt.  The kids did a great job of recognizing sadness and the symptoms of sadness as nervous, angry, sleepy, lonely, and yes even hungry. We gave each other permission to be sad.  Through the conversations there were many tears and lots of laughter. To be in the room was an honor as they wrapped Brody and each other in love. As the instructional day continued various students would approach me with questions and stories of their own connections to death.  I am sure that many more questions and thoughts will arise as students have time to process through the evening.  I encourage you to please have a conversation with your child about their thoughts and feelings of the day. If you or your child are in need of any additional resources, please do not hesitate to contact myself or Mrs. Deeter.

For anyone interested, the details of the visitation are listed below, along with a link to the obituary sent to me by Mr. Petro.  As a team I would like to send flowers, and get Brody a memory blanket from the class. In the obituary it also mentions two organizations that are accepting donations in her name. If you are interested in contributing to a class gift, feel free to send money in tomorrow.  Whatever money is collected will go towards flowers, a blanket, and hopefully a sizable donation to the Johnson County Humane Society.  It is also fine if you are unable to contribute or wish to contribute individually. 

Service Arrangements:

Wednesday from 4-8 at Swartz funeral home in Franklin will be her viewing.

Thursday starting at 10:30 will be her burial.

Virginia R Petro - Obituary

Sad News - Please read immediately.

Dear TEAM33 Parents,

I am contacting you with with a very heavy heart and an abundance of sad news today.  Over the weekend, one of our teammates, Brody, lost his mother to cancer.  This is difficult for even the strongest adult, but unthinkable for a 10 year old boy to endure.  Brody's mom, Virginia, was a loving, caring, involved mother.  She has been very involved in our classroom this year, planning parties, organizing classroom materials, working in centers with the students, and even just being a friend to each student.  Because of this connection and their closeness with Brody I am sure this loss will deeply affect each of them. I want you to know Mrs. Moore and I are working closely with the counselor, Mrs. Deeter, to ensure that the students are surrounded with love and support during the school day. We also want you to know that you may contact us if you are in need of any additional support or resources as you help your child work through this difficult time.

We will let you know any additional details about arrangements as we receive them. 

Hug your child tightly!

Love,

Melisa

Melisa McCain

4th Grade Teacher

Needham Elementary

Wednesday, January 13

What a great day to be a Needham Bulldog! Today we went to all of the New 7 Wonders of the world.  When we were done, we still had time to take a quick trip to the moon.  Not many people can say that!
If you want to have an EXCITING conversation with your child about their school day...just mention the Google Expeditions. If you want to learn more, check out this Scholastic Article on Google Expeditions.


MATH: As we finish up our Thermal Energy unit, we are keeping our multiplication skills fresh.  Today we even added on the "Old People Method" for multiplication.  You know...the method we learned when we were in school :)  Thank goodness it has a different name.  It is commonly called the US Traditional Method.  Students may need your help tonight as they work through the problem 65 x 93 =  If you need a refresher, feel free to check out the U.S. TRADITIONAL video.

Monday, January 11

HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEWS???
Google Expeditions are coming to Needham.  This is exciting stuff.
Through the technology that Google Expedition provides all of our students will be able to visit the 7 Wonders of the World.  What an amazing opportunity.  Most adults never get to do that! We can't wait for our adventure! Which one of the 7 Wonders would you like to visit? We just hope that the weather does not interrupt our plans!

Report cards go home today! The students are excited to share them with you!  A lot of hard work went into these grades.  Students should also be bringing home feedback and data binders for review.
MATH: Homework is to make a three digit by by three digit multiplication problem and complete it using their favorite method:

Partial Products Method

Lattice Method

Standard Method (We haven't done this one yet, but it is coming up in the next Unit.)

Wednesday, January 6

Another great day in TEAM33!!

SCIENCE: Today we learned what  thermal energy is and how to make it.  We even learned how it affects other particles!

HOMEROOM:  Today was our UNWANTED GIFT EXCHANGE and it was a HOOT!  My favorite gift was a bag of Hamburger Buns!!  The kids and I laughed and laughed!!  The great thing is many of the kids got some really cool gifts!  To make it even more meaningful, some of the students have decided to their gifts of toys (not hamburger buns) to children at Riley who really will WANT them.  If you have any additional toys and gifts you would like to donate to Riley, please send them in by Friday.

Tuesday, January 5

I LOVE MY JOB!!  Don't get me wrong, I was hugging my pillow just as hard as the kids this morning! But as soon as I got here, I knew there was no other place I wanted to be.  I truly missed the kids!  We started our day with a fun game of "Who did what on Christmas Break?" After that we jumped right into our Feedback and Data Binders.  We added our Unit 5 test information.  Please take a few minutes to review this data with your child and fill out the reflection page.  Knowing that you are interested in their data makes a big difference in how interested they will be in their data!

Later in the day we continued diving into data with our NWEA Goal Packets. Students looked at their data from the winter test we just took, and compared it to their past data.  It was interesting to hear them verbalize what they had done well on and what they needed to focus on to improve.  These kids really do take their education seriously!

This week will be a "Science" week and we will be studying Energy.  The students did a great job today of listing some things they already know about energy and some questions they have about energy.  Then we began our study by watching a video about heat.  What does heat have to do with energy? Well...We will find out tomorrow!!

Just a few reminders for the week:

Tomorrow will be our unwanted Christmas Gift Exchange. The fun will begin at 1:10.
Tomorrow is also Science Bowl and MATH Bowl.  All participants should be picked up at 4:00.