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• What a busy first half of the school year we have had! We look forward to updating you again in 2014! 

• 3^rd Grade ~ Kristi Anderson & Deb Winburn
• Third grade has tolerated the unusually cold weather lately by keeping our bodies and brains heated up with a wealth of learning activities. Christmas is in the air with our recent concert performance, visiting Sun Dial Manor and Golden Living Center, and the numerous works of art that adorn our walls. Third graders are also preparing to enter two area contests, Design-an-Ad and the Woodsy Owl/Smokey Bear poster contest sponsored by the Groton Garden Club.
•  Science finds us studying ecosystems, and students will be making trioramas to illustrate these.
• We are finishing up our study of urban, rural, and suburban communities in social studies. January will find us studying Martin Luther King as well as beginning to read more biographies.
•  We have been spending a great deal of time on recognizing main ideas and supporting details in reading class. We are also learning words with prefixes and suffixes as well as possessive forms. We will read Sarah, Plain and Tall when we return in January. Mrs. Anderson's group just finished Frindle, and students enjoyed learning about new words through a game called Fakeout. Mrs. Winburn's group enjoyed Buffaloes Before Breakfast and are excited to read more in the series.
•  We wish all of you a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year!

• 5^th Grade ~ Shelby Hendrickson & Janel Lone
• It is hard to believe that we are approaching the halfway point of the school year.  We have taken our first writing assessment for the state and are looking at doing our second when we come back from Christmas vacation.  We had some computer issues, but we expect the second to go better now that the bugs are worked out and our students understand the process.
• Students have spent part of the first half of the year reviewing things from fourth grade.  It has just been the last month that we have moved into more unfamiliar territory.  In Math, we started reviewing adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing whole numbers and decimals.  We have just finished long division and division by 2 digit divisors.  We will be moving into fractions after the New Year. 
• In Science, we have completed the section on Earth and space.  We are currently in physical science and learning about atoms.  The electric company came in and did a short presentation on how we get electricity.  We will also have the opportunity to build robots.  Social Studies has us reviewing the geography of our nation

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