January 9-January 20

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a wonderful winter break, spending time with friends and family. Now that we are rested up, here is what's happening in our first several weeks back.

Kindergarten
Kindergarten students are going to be playing with words and have been using their logic to figure out "Tomorrow's Alphabet", a wonderful book which teaches us that "A is for SEED, tomorrow's APPLE". A fun book and fun game to play at home which will help your child deal with sequencing and build their vocabulary.

1st Grade
1st Graders continue to work with DOT and will be finishing up in the next week or two using their logic and sharing the answers and reasoning for the specific answers they recorded on their DOT sheets.

2nd Grade
2nd Graders are being introduced to Max the Magician, who is teaching them to visualize and use visual-spatial reasoning to solve problems. Students learn to flip, rotate, and slide shapes to help solve visual problems, and use their imaginations to visusualize solutions.

3rd Grade
Reading students have finished up their respective rodent novels "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" or "Poppy". They have created and are now evaluating and judging each others board game projects that were assigned over break.

Math students have finished up Unit 4 and begin on Unit 5 in EVERYDAY Math 4th Grade. This unit focuses on extending multiplication skills, estimation, and multiplication strategies.

4th Grade
Reading students are finishing up "The View from Saturday" and our gathering information about the 4 areas of expertise of the main characters in the story. They are then taking that information and using technology to share with peers.

Math students are working on mathematical problem-solving from math competitions, are reading a mathematical theme novel called "The Toothpaste Millionaire", and as an extension will be exploring the Stock Market.

5th Grade
Reading students are learning various approaches for reading the works of William Shakespeare. They have been given short scenes from variouis plays such as The Tempest, Macbeth, and A Midsummer Night's Dream and have auditions on Friday.

Math students are working on Unit 6th of EVERYDAY math which focuses on creaating compass and straight edge constructions, and using a compass to create circle graphs.

That's all for now. If you have questions about GTD Services at Irving School, I can always be contacted at ppacker@op97.org

All my best,
Mr. Packer