Friday, the 13th...

Dear Parents,

Our only bad luck today on Friday the 13th is the number of flu cases we've had! Yuck!  If your child has a fever (even a slight one), aches, or vomiting, I would assume it could be the flu and get it checked out at the doctor.  Please let us know if your child does have a confirmed case of the flu. We have to keep track of our number of students with it.  Please check out below to see what we've been doing in class and REMEMBER, we have a field trip to the Fire Safety Village on Monday. Send a sack lunch in disposable bags if your child does not wish to purchase a sack lunch from school.

Phonics/Grammar:  We practiced our long and short vowel patterns this week and we also learned when to double the final consonant of a work before adding a suffix (-ed).  We reviewed adjectives with a fun holiday story writing activity.

Reading: We read the book Night Tree by Eve Bunting.  We identified important elements in the story. We also read four more chapters in The Chocolate Touch and wrote about connections we can make to the events in the story.  In small groups, we worked on skills to improve our reading like fluency, making accurate predictions based on what we know from the story already, and decoding very challenging words by chunking the parts.  We also worked individually to complete an assessment to show our growth in reading.

Math: We completed our unit on Measurement.  We read the book Measuring Penny and then completed the homework assignment that was assigned in this exact book.  In class, we created "measure pets" from shapes and then used our rulers to measure their body parts.  We worked on practicing our strategies to solve addition and subtraction when decomposing or composing a ten is required. Please pay special attention to your child's graded work in math. Additional support at home may be needed.  Also, all the children need to be going on Math Magician (see website labeled "math facts" below on blog) to practice memorization of addition and subtraction facts.  There are many children who are still having to count on their fingers. At this point in the year, all should be fluent (which means "quick" and "accurate") with facts to 20. 

Writing: We completed our second Lab Report, learning how real scientists write.  We reviewed the format for this type of scientific writing; question, hypothesis, procedures, data, and conclusion.

AND, we've been VERY busy working on a special holiday gift for parents!!!

Class News and Information...

Next week is the last week for Study Island and AR!

The students have retaken the SRI and SMI assessments, which are tests that give us one indicator of how they are progressing in reading and math.  We will update the Progress Report, which will come home in the envelope with your child's report card in January. 

Remember our field trip on Monday to the Fire Safety Village. If you received an email earlier this week about forgetting to sign BOTH sides of the permission slip, you must return the form by Monday for your child to be allowed to participate in the bike safety segment of the trip.  

Next Thursday from 9:50-11:00 is our classroom holiday party!  WOOOOHOOOOO!  All parents are welcome to attend (No SIBLINGS please! Our room is VERY crowded as is!)

Our book exchange is next Thursday. Please have your child send in a new, wrapped, CHAPTER book (3rd grade level, no picture books please).  

Mrs. Steinhauser and Mrs. Martin (Rylan's mom) are the chaperones for our Fire Safety field trip. Thank you in advance!

If you haven't sent in your LARGE clorox or Lysol wipes, please so do next week!

If you haven't sent in your stocking stuffers yet, please do so.  We will be continuing this behavior incentive through next Friday and need some more items!