This past week was highlighted by our Halloween festivities on Friday.  Everyone enjoyed dressing up in our costumes for the day, and the day culminated with a class celebration in our classroom. The doughnut eating competition that was part of our festivities, in which everyone made their best attempt to eat a doughnut suspended on a string from the ceiling, was a big hit. Lots of laughter and cheering on of fellow classmates as this hands-free, mouths-only game ensued!

Prior to our party, however, we had a good and productive week of learning together. In math, the students have been hard at work reviewing multiplication, especially their recall of their multiplication facts. As a group, they have all increased both their accuracy and speed of their recall of the facts from zero to 12. Their success with this skill will serve them well as we begin our exploration of division this coming week.

In reading, we are just about finished with Avi’s novel, Poppy. The students will culminate their reading of this story with their choice of a small in-class project, which we will begin later this week. The project will include a possible creative writing opportunity, as well as a few visual arts possibilities. These projects will allow students to portray their understanding of the story in a myriad of ways, highlighting the different strengths that each child has. Upon concluding these projects, we will be taking a break from reading a book in class together, and will be starting a Reading and Writing Workshop. I am very excited about this new program, which will allow more flexibility for the students to work individually on reading books that interest them and fit their personal reading level. Stay tuned for more information as this program gets underway!

We have just about finished our map exploration in social studies. Most recently the students have enjoyed learning about geography through the use of a Battleship-style game, which reinforces their knowledge of latitude and longitude. The children always love when they get to learn through play, and great fun was had by all. Coming up this week we will be working with and learning about different geographical land forms as we will be starting the Land Form Project.

As the fall trimester is drawing to a close in the next few weeks, the children have all done a wonderful job during their first term as middle school students. We are looking forward to continued growth and success and learning together as the year progresses.