I know I have said it before, but I am super excited about this school year.  Thank you for your support this week!  Next week we will be starting some wonderful things in both math and in writing.
    In math we will be starting our Math in Focus program.  Math in Focus is a wonderful program that teaches our students to think flexibly, problem solve, and understand not just the 'how' of math, but the 'why' of math.  They learn the processes for computation, but they also learn why those processes work the way they work.  They learn how to add and subtract with regrouping, but they also learn that we operate on a base ten system which is why you need to regroup by groups of ten.  Math in Focus is often confusing at first glance (especially for adults), which is why our wonderful Math Coach, Mrs. Debbie Lane has offered to host Family Math Nights here at Shorewood.  Math nights will happen once a month.  The first one is going to be on the 19th of September from 6:00pm-7:00pm.  These nights are for parents to come and learn about our new math program, and I am sure they will be interesting and fun. 
    We have a couple of new things starting up in writing next week.  We are going to start working on personal narratives.  I am asking students to bring in an 'artifact' from their summer.  This artifact can be anything (please make sure it is school appropriate and fits in the backpack) that reminds a student of his/her summer break.  We will be using this artifact as inspiration while we brainstorm ideas for a personal narrative. On top of working on personal narratives we will be practicing proper paragraph and sentence structure by writing about our 'Star of the Week'.  With the upcoming election, I have decided that our first Star of the Week will be Barack Obama.  We will learn a few things about our President and write a paragraph about him. (Star of the Week is going to link closely to Social Studies this year.)