It is hard to believe that November is already done! We have accomplished so much already this year and have so much more to complete. This week we will be getting back on track after snow days and a two day week! All testing (SNAP & spelling) will occur as usual and a green homework sheet will be coming home tomorrow (due Thursday) as well.
Thank you so much for donating to the multiple projects that we have coming up! I am still collecting for our Holiday Hope project if you are still interested in helping. Any donation is so helpful! Also, please take a moment to fill out the form for our VIP Christmas Cafe. Please select three possible donation items, and I will select one for you to donate (if you are able). I am really looking forward to this special celebration! On Thursday we will be having another book club meeting! If you have read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and would like to join us in celebrating this book, please feel free to join us! We will be meeting on Thursday at 6:00 in our classroom. Please send me a quick email to confirm your attendance if you plan on coming to this book club! Curriculum Update: Math: This week our focus will be all on time. We will be working on telling time to the nearest minute, using phrases to help identify time (half past, quarter after...), and identifying elapsed time. Elapsed time can be a very tricky concept so extra practice is always a good idea! This site has some fun games to play! Science: We will be putting the final touches on our animal projects this week. At the end of the week we will be presenting our projects to each other. Grammar: This week we will be reviewing what an adverb is again. We will be practicing identifying these in our reading and using them in our writing. Writing: This week we will be celebrating our writing. We will celebrate by watching videos of our classmates reading their stories. Links to these will be following soon! We will also be working on creating a constructive response to our classmates' writing. Reading: We will be taking a closer look at the genre of poetry this week. We will work on using our detective skills to infer what a poem may mean. We will be learning about figurative language and even practicing using some figurative language of our own. Reminders: * PE - Tuesday & Friday * Thursday @ 6:00 - Book club (please RSVP via email) * December 9 - Parent Club meeting 9am * December 10 & 11 - Santa's Workshop (by parent club) * December 13th 10:00am @ Target in Grandville - Holiday Hope shopping * December 16 - Christmas Concert @ Fellowship * December 17 - Holiday Hope wrapping party @ 2:30 * December 18 - VIP Christmas Cafe @ 2:10 - 3:45
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I think it is safe to say that last week caught us all off guard! Those two snow days did a number on our plans for the week. Both snow days fell on testing days (for SNAP and spelling) so we will be using the same facts and spelling words this week. Since we missed two days of math instruction, I did not send home a new math worksheet. I will be sending one this week that will be due the Thursday that we return from Thanksgiving. Finally, there will be no current even due this week. Holiday Hope ReminderI have officially selected a family for our Holiday Hope project! The family that we are helping this Christmas is a family containing 4 children ranging in age from 2 - 9. I am so excited that we will be able to bring hope to this family this year! If you haven't turned in your Holiday Hope sheet yet, please do so soon. I will be starting to organize our shopping list over the next few weeks. Remember, you are welcome to come help us shop even if you are not able to donate this time. All shoppers are welcome and are a great help! Our shopping day is Saturday, December 13th at 10:00. We will be meeting at the Target in Grandville. Thank you so much for supporting this project!
Christmas CafeOn Friday, a note came home about our upcoming Christmas Poetry Cafe (and VIP day). This will be taking place on Thursday, December 18th at 2:10. Students are to select one special person to come to this event as their VIP. This will be an opportunity to celebrate our poetry writing, celebrate the season, enjoy treats, and give appreciation to our VIPs. Due to space constraints, I ask that you limit it to only one person. If you have any questions, or need a new paper, please email me right away! RemindersNO SCHOOL - Nov.26-28
PE - Monday Tuesday - Wear "BE the 1" shirts December 9 - Parent club meeting 9am December 13th - Holiday Hope shopping (10am Grandville Target) December 16th - Christmas Concert December 17th - Holiday Hope wrapping party (2:30) December 18th - Christmas Cafe & VIP day (2:10) Last week sure was a fun week! With the snow making an early entrance (welcome winter?!) so did our boots! Students have done an awesome job with taking care of their snow gear, which can be a very tricky job given our small space to hang stuff! Please remember to send shoes in backpacks. If your child wishes to keep a pair of shoes at school, they may. Try to find your least stinky pair and we will store them the the baskets above our hooks! On Friday we began our kinder buddies with Mrs.Jacobson's class. It was so much fun watching the third graders transform into little teachers! The best was listening in on conversations later in the day about how their kinder buddies were, "so smart" and "really really good." I even heard the comment of, "that was exhausting! Teaching is hard work!" I really had a good laugh at that one! We will continue to meet with our kinder buddies every Friday and will do different celebrations with them along the way. Friday was also our pizza party and scoreboard party day! We sure know how to go our with a bang on a Friday! The couple at final home that we raked during our rake and run wanted to provide pizza to the class to thank us for our hard work. I was blown away by the kindness shown to us. There was enough food to feed an army! We even received the most beautiful thank you card that included a generous donation for our Holiday Hope project. We will plan on taking a picture of our Holiday Hope project to share with them later! Curriculum UpdateMath: This week we will continue our measuring unit. Last week we focused on capacity (gallons, quarts, pints, cups, liters, milliliters). This week we will be talking more about weight and transitioning into time.
Science: This week we will be working on our animal research projects. Students will be writing an essay using information that they collected. Grammar: This week we will be working on adverbs. This site has some links to more adverb practice! Writing: We will be wrapping up our second personal narrative this week! We are going to work on our endings, revise, edit and begin final copies. Reading: We will be working on distinguishing our own point of view from that of the author of a text. We will be focusing on what an opinion is and how this can show up in different forms of text. Reminders: PE - Wednesday Friday - flashlight friday library (please send books!) November 26 - 28 NO SCHOOL (Thanksgiving Break) Curriculum Math: This week we will be diving into our third unit, measurement. This unit involves learning about different units of measurement as well as solving word problems. Science: We will be continuing on with our animal unit this week. We will be working on our explorer projects and researching different animals and their unique adaptations. Grammar: This week will be all about adjectives. We will be talking about how helpful adjectives are in our writing and work on identifying them as well. Writing: Students will continue to draft this week with the focus being on adding meaningful dialogue and telling the inner story. Reading: This week we will be working on identifying tension within stories and using our schema to make predictions about that tension. Reminders
Gitler's GumshoesWe have really had a blast with our math this past unit! We spent this unit exploring multiplication word problems and order of operations as if we were detectives. Students wore badges during math time with their official "gumshoe" picture and detective name. We carefully investigated math problems by underlining all "evidence" and being sure that we knew all of our "suspects." Finally, special agents finished up the math problem by saying, "case closed," and putting the label on the number. We will continue to act as detectives as we explore our next unit in math! Check out a few of our detectives below! Science FunWe took some time this week to explore animal adaptations. One adaptation that we discussed is the different bird beaks. Students used tools that represented different beaks to investigate what kind of foods different beaks may eat. Students learned that it was nearly impossible for a hummingbird to pick up "seeds" to eat due to the long pointy beak. We will continue to explore animals this coming week as well. Hard Working AuthorsThis week the most amazing thing happened at the conclusion of writing workshop. When I announced that the writing time was over, there was a loud collective GROAN! It was music to my teacher ears! I looked around at students trying to squeeze just one more sentence in and asked if they would like to continue. Nearly every student raised their hand! I smiled and granted them their wish. How could I stop these budding authors who have unlocked the secret to loving writing?! I can't wait to share the amazing words that are being written in our classroom. Another adult commented to me, "I think they write better than I do!" They truly are amazing and I am blown away every day by their writing! Rake and RunThank you so much for all of your hard work, time, donations, and overall support of our very first student service project! I was so proud of the teamwork that I saw out of students as they worked together to clear the yards. We were able to clean 3 yards in the span of an hour and a half! The only way to accomplish that kind of amazing task is through team work and cooperation, and we nailed it!
I want to give a special THANK YOU to Gemmen's for the large donation of lawn bags! We sure went through a ton of bags and that donation was so very helpful! Also, a BIG thank you to Mr.Tom who volunteered to drop the leaves off at Roark's using his trailer. I am pretty sure I would still be hauling leaves if it wasn't for that help! Finally, thank you to each person who helped or donated. This was a big task that was made possible by each of you! One of the most memorable moments for me was at the very end when the last homeowner came out of her home to say "thank you." She approached me with tears in her eyes and thanked me for the work that we did. She said that her kids attended Park long ago and that Park is dear to her heart. What an amazing opportunity for our kids to be able to show her that Park still is such a wonderful place with loving students! Her heart was truly overflowing, and I think our hearts were as well. Halloween was a blast! We started our morning off by dissecting owl pellets (or so I thought). As I unwrapped the first pellet I thought, "gee, these look a little fluffier than I remember." It was soon discovered that the pellets appeared to be "fluffy" because they were synthetic pellets containing plastic bones! I suppose the name "Perfect Pellet" should have been a dead give away! After all, I have yet to find the true "perfect" owl pellet! The kids still enjoyed matching the bones up on a chart. I will consider this our warm-up so that when do the real pellets the kids aren't so grossed out! We will give it another shot later in the school year! Our first party of the year was wonderful! Thank you so much for your wonderful donations of treats and candy at the Halloween party. We had some fun playing pass the ghost, who's the ghost, and what item is missing. I am looking forward to more fun parties later in the year! Our Rake and Run will be taking place on Friday directly after school. If you have not yet turned in the slip and would like to donate, help, or do both, please send it in before Thursday. I have attached the file at the bottom of this post in case you have lost the information. Remember, all students must be picked up by an adult following our raking. We will be back at the school and ready for pick up around 5:20! We are in need of lawn bags, rakes, and people! Thank you so much for supporting this project! Conferences will be taking place this week. If you are unsure of your conference time, or are unable to come, please contact me right away! I look forward to meeting with all of you and sharing the wonderful things that your child is accomplishing!
Curriculum UpdateMath: This week we will be wrapping up unit 2 of our multiplication. We will be reviewing and taking our pretest this week.
Science: This week we will be investigating bird beaks and other animal adaptations. Grammar: This week we will wrap up our verb portion of our grammar notebooks. Writing: Students will begin drafting their second personal narratives this week. We will be focusing on "exploding the moment" to make our stories full of detail. Reading: We will be setting new goals in all curriculum areas, including reading. We will also begin to search for setting in our stories. Reminders:
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