What's+Happening+in+Room+09+in+January?

**I hope you all enjoyed having your children at home and that the last two weeks were relaxing and full of laughter and good cheer.**
= The Cool and Unusual = ===** ﻿No field trips this month. But a cultural exchange is headed our way. We will have two elementary students from China in our class for the last week of the month. I'm going to be planning some cool ways to share our culture, make them feel welcome, and create a bond that we can sustain throughout the year. **=== = = ====**﻿Math ** ==== ===** ﻿ ﻿We continue to work to truly master multiplication, memorize the facts, and understand factors and multiples. This week, I introduced some simple division. We are going to amp up quickly and will soon be tackling some very difficult computation and word problems. **===

**﻿Reading**
===** The Mystery Reading Log is due at the end of the month - Jan. 31st. I will be sending a short note home next Monday (Jan. 10th) to update you on your child's progress with the log. I think everyone should be on his/her third book ** at a minimum ﻿. My read-aloud for the month is __Shakespeare's Secret__, a wonderful mystery. We have also begun the Pooch Pearson reading skill mysteries. These are fun little stories that emphasize specific reading skills such as identifying the author's purpose, determining the main ideas, etc. We continue to read aloud daily from many different texts - our Social Studies book on Washington State, Storyworks, etc. ===

 ﻿ ﻿Writing
===** ﻿This month is all about writing. We've been talking about memoir and will shortly begin to start crafting a piece based on a selected entry from each child's Pearl Journal. Today we collectively wrote a four paragraph essay on the topic - Dogs are the Preferred Pet. Everyone used a mind map. We discussed topic sentences, reading and rereading as you write, main ideas and details, and concluding statements. Later in the week, we will do the same for cats. **=== ===Science === **We were very excited to be raising salmon this year as we have for the last 12 years. Unfortunately, that won't be the case. Budget cuts at the state level have eliminated the program. So sorry.** ** Seattle Times. **