Presidential Election, Lots of Books, and Problem Solving in Math

Presidential Election
The students waited with great anticipation to see who our next president would be after Tuesday's nationwide election.  They also wanted to see how the national results compared to their mock election results.  Let me begin by saying that I made a mistake when I posted our class mock election results last week.  I should have reported our class results as follows:

Hillary Clinton = 13.3%
Gary Johnson = 40%
Jill Stein = 40%
Donald Trump = 6.7%

When the students came to school on Wednesday morning there were many emotions shared about the election.  Some were happy about the outcome while others were upset.   It was important to let them talk about it.  Regardless of my political choice, I view it as my responsibility to make sure the kids have a safe place to talk about the election results in a respectful way.  I will continue to use our Second Step program to help students practice their social and emotional learning.  One of the most recent lessons was learning how to agree to disagree respectfully; very timely as they process the election results.

Lots of Books!
Lots of books were delivered to our classroom last week as part of a study our school is participating in, headed by Mrs. Newton and Miss Carlock.  We received 15 bags of books to keep in our classroom for a while; each bag contains many books about the same topic. Research has shown that regardless of their reading level, reading scores will improve if students are exposed to multiple books about the same topic. So... we are giving it a try and are very lucky to have these books in our classroom.  The books are all from our library so if students want to continue reading books from these bags, they can sign them out of the library when the books are finished circulating in the classrooms. 

Problem Solving in Math
Students worked together in math this week to solve a problem for our math forum next week.  They are trying to figure out which is a better buy:  a package of 8 granola bars that costs $10, or a package of 20 granola bars that costs $23:

They are creating posters to share their thinking.  I can't wait to see and hear what they have to say.  This lesson is in support of our fractions unit.