Happy Friday!
It's been another quick week here at JES -- I'm starting to get sad at the thought of saying goodbye to this class!

This week has been busy. In math, we starting adding and subtracting fractions, thinking about how the denominators affect the way we do this. If the denominators are the same or are multiples of each other, adding the fractions is easy. If not, we don't add them until Grade 5!  I think the class is understanding fractions pretty well, but figuring out which is bigger/smaller is still a bit of a challenge. We'll get there

Students are continuing to research events from the American Revolution. We spent a few weeks researching the events leading up to it, but now we are researching battles, important people, and other events. Once again, I am impressed with the level of interest and perseverance I am seeing.  We also had out mock Second Continental Congress this week. I dressed up as John Hancock (thanks to Noelle Tripodi for the costume) and the Loyalists and Patriots defended their side. They were almost as heated up as the real Patriots and Loyalists from the 1700's! 

As we learn more about this topic, we are better equipped to write our research reports. This final piece of writing will include 2 non-fiction sections, a story (historical fiction) and an essay!  It is a culminating project that will end with the publication of a small magazine (one for each writer) and celebrates ALL of the kinds of writing we learned about this year. I've started reading over the beginnings of the drafts, and I can't believe how much these kids have learned!

In Social Studies, we have moved away from our focus on the Abenaki and have started learning about Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys. However, we are completing a few hands-on projects that are related to the Abenaki. The students are working in pairs to make board games that are about the Abenaki. They are also working together to make a model Abenaki village out of natural materials as well as some craft supplies. We will continue this next week. It is a ton of fun!

Our week ended with a celebration  with the 4th graders from both UCS and UID. All of the 4th graders did a "squiggle drawing" and then 3 other 4th graders worked on them by adding objects, details and a background. We hung them all here at JES and did a gallery walk and enjoyed snack together. It was a fun celebration!

I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!