Thank you Mystery Readers

Thanks Tracy for coming to read!

Mystery Readers-Principal Holder and Mr. Howell

Thanks Principal Holder (Alayna's dad) for reading to our class earlier this week! We loved your story!

Another thanks to Mr. Howell (Tierney's dad)! I missed you yesterday afternoon, but the kids enjoyed you.

Thank you to Jerry & Marilyn (Alayna's grandparents) for being our mystery reader this morning

 "You are Special" by Max Lucado

Mystery Reader-Carter W's mom!

Thank you to Ashley (Carter W's mom) for reading to our class today!
We loved having you and loved the stories you chose!

The 4 C's: Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, and Critical Thinking

After our wonderful presentation by Monty Selby monteselby.com yesterday during our staff development, I was reminded about the incorporation of the 4 Cs into our daily lessons.  Today, I wanted to finish up our social studies research on Immigrants with a project-based activity that not only allowed kids to be creative, but also to collaborate with a peer. Tomorrow, they will be communicating their understandings about immigrants with other students in our classroom!

Here are a few photos of our work today!

Tierney & Xavier working on their illustration of what immigration meant to them and their quick facts speech!

 Catherine, Selena & Elijah working on their illustration and speech to present tomorrow.

 Jasmine & Alayna  working on their illustration and speech about immigrants!

 Alia, Breanna, (and Tessa, got cut off) are working on their illustration and speech to present tomorrow about immigration.

 Mireya & Katrina are working on their illustration and their Game Show questions/answers to present tomorrow!

 Brady & Dylan are working on their illustration and their speech to present tomorrow.

 Carter, Addison (and Adis not shown) are working on their illustration and their speech/rap to present tomorrow.

 Aiden & J'veonte are working on their illustration and rap for tomorrow's presentation.

 Here are our facts about immigration that we have been researching this week from 2 different non-fiction articles that we were practicing our Connect to Text comprehension strategy on.

 Paige & Sabrina are working on their illustration and song to present tomorrow showing what they know about immigration.

Madelyn & Jasmine are working on their illustration and speech about immigration tomorrow!

Holiday Craft Wishlist

Hi parents-we have a few items that we are hoping to collect for our Holiday crafts we will be completing in the next couple weeks:

Empty egg cartons
Fabric, ribbon and lace scraps (in Christmas colors/themes/styles or neutrals)



Thanks so much!

December 8-12 Spelling Test

Lists for next week are published on www.spellingcity.com/loristeinbrink

Students can take their tests as early as Monday!

Report Cards

Report cards are coming home today! Be sure to check your child's backpack for them!

Today's Mystery Reader

Thanks to our Mystery Reader-Kari J. We loved having you today!

Today's Mystery Reader-Erin W!

Thanks to our Mystery Reader-Erin W. We loved having you today! Parents-it's not too late to be a mystery reader! http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0d48afac2fa3f94-holiday

Today's Mystery Reader!

Thanks to our Mystery Reader-Marie K. We loved having you today! Parents-it's not too late to be a mystery reader! http://www.signupgenius.com/go/20f0d48afac2fa3f94-holiday

If you are able to sign up, please keep it a secret from your child-the best you can!

Send me 3 clues as to who you are that will help the kids be able to figure out who you are before your date to read! I'll share them sporadically with the students the day you are coming to read!

Partial-Product Multiplication

Partial-Products Multiplication (1-digit multipliers)

This blog post is intended to help explain how to use partial-product multiplication to solve multiplication problems. We teach many ways of multiplication in 4^th grade, and this is just another method. We like to provide the opportunity to let our students discover a method that works really well for them! I know this is not the way I learned when I was younger, but now as I teach, I really understand this method, and how it could be a method of choice for different students. If you would like more explanation surrounding this type of multiplication, I would love to explain further. J

~ In this method, multiplication is usually done from left to right. This ensures that the most important products, the largest ones, are calculated first, but it is not incorrect for a student to multiply from right to left.

~ Each part of the calculation, each partial product, is written on a separate line. Then the partial products are added. This is usually very simple and has the benefit of providing practice with column addition

How to:

1.)   As a class, we make estimations to help guide us, so we have an idea of what our answer should be around. For this problem, I would estimate 800 x 6 = 4,800

2.)   Line up your factors! It is very helpful to do this! It can be beneficial to draw a dotted line down to ensure that your numbers are being properly lined up. This will be very helpful in the last step.

3.)   For this next step, you can start from the left or the right of the larger number. I personally tend to start multiplying from the left to the right, even though this is very different from what I learned as a child. J I am going to start by multiplying 800 x 6. My answer is 4,800 and I write it down in its respective place value spots. Next, I multiply 60 x 9. My answer is 360 and I write it down in the respective spot. Finally, I multiply 6x9 and get 45. This number also goes into its respective spot.

4.)   The last step! This is where it pays off to have your products lined up correctly! Add all of your products together to find the answer. In this case, I added 4,800+360+54 and got 5, 214.

This method is difficult at first, and may take extra time to use, but I have seen it be a first choice for many students. Good luck using this method, and let me know if you have any questions!