The Phillips Food Drive

Our class is working hard to collect food for the annual Phillips Food Drive. As of this morning we were in third place for grades 3 through 5, but that was before this heaping box of donations was collected and counted. We are hoping to knock Mr. Adrian's class out of first place and win that 20 minutes of extra recess.



We are enjoying the competition, but even more important than that, we will be helping some Phillips families to have a better Thanksgiving. Many of our families have been affected by the down turn in the economy. We are hoping to put together 20 food baskets this year.



It is a big task to collect and sort all the donations. Mrs. Ellefson and the student council handle this big job. The stage area in the library is rapidly filling will all kinds of non-perishable food.

Scholastic Book Clubs

I will soon be placing orders with Scholastic Book Clubs. This will be the first time this year. I usually place orders with The Arrow Book Club which includes books for fourth through sixth graders, and the Lucky Book Club, which has books for second through third graders. Tomorrow, interested students will bring home the November flyer for Arrow Book club. You can go on line to look at additional catalogs for both Arrow and Lucky Book Clubs.

If you are interested in online ordering, the web address is: Scholastic/com/bookclubs. Our Class Activation Code is: HLX78

If you're not interested in on-line ordering, you can still order using the form from the printed flyer. Orders for the November flyer are due on Tuesday, November 23.

This is one way that we earn additional books for our classroom library.

Problem Solving Fridays

Every Friday we work on problem solving. We actually do problem solving (word problems) lots of other days, too. The problems we solve on Fridays have a monthly theme, and they really make us think.



When we do this, I turn the teaching over to the kids. They show us how they solved the problem. What we realize is, there are lots of ways to solve a problem.



Here's one we had from last Friday:

#17: Multiplication: Trick or Treat!

Marvin wants to plan the amount of candy to give out for Halloween. He figures that he will have 25 trick-or-treaters per hour for 4 hours. Each trick-or-treater will receive 3 pieces of candy.

How much candy will Marvin need for the evening?

Problem solving is important, because these are skills we use in everyday life. It is an important way to develop creativity and thinking skills. Problem solving is also part of our homework this month. Students are to work on two or three problems each homework night. Some students have additional problems. These additional pages are called Math Star. Some of the people who received these problems have been identified as Gifted and Talented, but I gave them to others as well, who I feel are good math students. On Fridays, I will go over some of these problems with students.

Please let me know how this work on problem solving goes. I will make modifications if necessary.