I just made a new Voki. See it here:

Monday, February 27, 2012

February 27 - March 2

Hello!

Hope you all had a chance to enjoy the beautiful weather this weekend! Hopefully it will stay around for awhile! :) It's a big week for 3rd grade as we will begin our Kansas Reading State Assessments. They will take place Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 12:00-1:30 (or longer if anyone needs extra time). Please make sure your child receives a good night's sleep and eats a healthy breakfast each day this week. There will be NO homework until Thursday evening.  There will also be NO SPELLING this week due to testing.

Thank you for sending in a white t-shirt. The kids were excited to decorate their "team jersey" for our annual KSA Super Bowl. The class decided on our team name--the Bandits!! GO BANDITS!

Please consider sending in non-perishable items for the 5th grade food drive for St. Mary's food kitchen this week. Thank you in advance.

Math
This week, we will begin Topic 15, focusing on liquid volume and mass. We will cover customary units of capacity, metric units of capacity, units of mass and units of weight this week.

Writing
We will begin writing autobiographies this week. We will be publishing the autobiographies into a hard bound book.  You will recieve one book free and you option of purchasing more than one.

Some of the 3rd graders will be purchasing one of their books and sending them to Ethiopia Reads. Ethiopia Reads is a program that sends books to fill libraries in Ethiopia. You do not need to donate a book to this program.  If you have any gently used books that you would rather donate to this program, we will certainly accept those as well.  It is an exciting opportunity for our children to be a part of something like this and be able to help kids across the world.

If you would like to purchase a copy of your child's autobiography you may do so by filling out the form that I gave to you at conferences. If not, please just sign the form and return it! Thank you and let me know if you have any questions about this. 

Social Studies
We will begin a unit about Economics that should last until Spring Break.

Have a fabulous week!

Thursday, February 16, 2012

February 20 - February 24

Hello!

Thanks so much for attending your child's conference!  It's a team effort to make sure your children are learning as much as they can to reach their fullest potential.  I truly appreciate all of the support you are giving them at home to help them prepare for the upcoming state assessments.  I know they'll do GREAT! 

REMINDERS!!
Please send a sack lunch with your child on Tuesday, February 21.  We will be attending the symphony during our lunch time so will eat when we return at 1:00. 

Please send a food dish with your child on Thursday, February 23rd.  Your child should come to school dressed in clothing that portrays their ancestor's country for the all school International Festival which will showcase their hard work over the past few weeks!

Please send a plain, white t-shirt by Friday, February 24.  We will design our own team jerseys for our KSA Super Bowl! 

Reading
We will begin with Theme 10 this week and will carry it out over the next three weeks. Our strategy focus is reviewing author's purpose along with comparing and contrasting information. We are stretching it out over the next few weeks as we are not allowed to do any other reading on the days the students take their state reading assessment.  We will still use our small group time to practice strategies that will help them on their assessments.

Spelling
Our Rigby words this week are brother, food, inside, atlas, sneeze, index, contents, data, edge, lunch, penny, summer, title, source and information.  Our prefix pattern is: trans-, which means across or through.  Our words are transatlantic, transcontinental, transcribe, transect, transfer, translate, translucent, transparent, transpiration and transport.  The test for both lists will be on Friday.

Writing
The students will be writing an autobiography for their published book this year.  We will begin those after our International Festival this week.  Look for more information regarding this soon!  :)

Math
Division!! The students did a fabulous job on our first division test.  We are currently studying fact families with division and multiplication facts.  We will have a test over Chapter 8 next week. 

Social StudiesThis week is the big week!  We have our International Festival on Thursday, February 23.  There will be an all school assembly from 10:00-10:45 in the morning with sampling various food from our countries and a chance for the different grade levels to learn more about our countries in the afternoon.  The students will showcase their hard work from 2:15-3:30 in the cafeteria.  Thanks so much for all of your help with this big undertaking.  We couldn't have accomplished it all without YOU!