Time sure is flying by, don’t you agree? We are already through our first week of October and Halloween is just a few weeks away! 
This week was a short week because of the Professional Day on Friday. Next week is also a short week because of Thanksgiving on Monday. In the blink of an eye, we will be into the middle of October.
This week was pretty busy. In Math, we continued our Place Value work by focusing on comparing and ordering numbers. We used strategies that had us look at the place values of numbers to help us compare numbers. 
We took things a step further and practiced some mental math strategies for addition using place value as well. Some of you finished the practice work in class, but most of you have some work to do over the long weekend. We want you to learn these strategies 
so you develop math fluency. We want you to confidently use and apply your knowledge of number relationships, number facts and our number system.
We continued our read aloud from “And Then it
Happened; Book 2″. Gordon got the boys into a real mess with the class pet. I felt really sad about how the gerbil died, did you? Maybe tell your family the story. The football story was pretty funny as well. I can just imagine a dog and a turkey playing football with the kids. I am not sure how Paulo’s dad felt about it at the end though.
In Science, we began our study of the Earth and its Orbit. We explored some important terms like axis, rotation, and eclipse. As we continue our studies, we 
will dive deep and try to understand how the Earth’s movements cause changes that we experience around us everyday. We will discover how the motions of the Earth and the moon cause patterns that affect both living and non-living things. This is sure to be a fun exploration!
Our Social Studies unit was introduced this week as well. We started with an “anticipation guide” to get our brains engaged and thinking about what the topic of study could be. You were shown a bunch of images and were asked to answer questions about each image. You discussed with a partner and then wrote your guesses down. There was no “wrong answer” as this was just to see what our background knowledge was. After that, you read a piece of text that incorporated those images and explained what how they connect. We will continue to work on that next week. Can your parents guess what we’ll be studying be based on these three set of images? 
We finally met our buddies this week as well. Our buddy class is Ms. Di Spirito’s Grade 1 class. At our first meeting, we got to know a little about each other by creating a BUDDY BOOK that our buddy will get to keep. During the year we will be visiting with them every other Monday.
We will be helping them learn to read, we will read to them and with them, and we will definitely be making some cool projects together too! They are so lucky to have such great student role models!
As we get more in the groove of things in Division 7, you are beginning to understand the expectations of you as grade 4 and 5 students. We have been discussing what went well for you last year and also, what you found challenging
. Goal setting is an important way to help us grow as students so we have begun exploring our hopes for the year ahead. This week you chose a single word that is going to help you focus and reach your goals. Next week, we will begin to look and short and long term goals and how we can best set ourselves up for success.
On Wednesday afternoon, we spent some time with the computers. You all have your sign in information along with passwords that are on stickers we placed in your planners. We practiced getting onto OFFICE 365 and you all accessed our classroom TEAM. 
This is a great place for you to connect with each other in positive ways from your homes after school and on weekends. It is also a place where you will be completing and turning in your weekly Blog Responses. 
This weekend will be your first chance to complete on online assignment, so…. good luck! As the year goes on, we will be using the TEAM and Office 365 in many different ways. During our computer time, we also explored Typing.com. 
That is a website you can use anytime, if you want to improve your typing skills. You do not need to sign up for an account, there are a lot of games to play that are really fun and help you practice.
All the computer work you did this week is part of our ADST curriculum ( T= Technology) and you all enjoy the time you can spend with computers. Another aspect of ADST is the “D” part of the acronym, which stands for DESIGN. 
On Thursday you finally were able to begin the planning stages of our first creative design project: A haunted house! Since we are connecting it to French, it’s called “La Maison Hantee”. 
The room was a BUZZ as you chatted, exchanged ideas, and began sketching your plans onto paper. You have taken this home for the weekend, so that each of you can think of ideas. Next week on Thursday and Friday, you’ll combine your ideas, finalize your plan ( for outside and inside the house) and then move on to the building stage of this project.
Your Blog response this weekend is this:
What are you thankful for? List 5 things that you are grateful for:
Have a wonderful LONG weekend Division 7!
Mrs. Davis and Mrs. Gil