October 9 Make Up PE
October 10 No School
October 13 Library Visit
October 17 No School
October 23-24 Student Led Conferences
Homework Due by Thursday, October 9th
1. Bring in materials for found object self portrait ( more details below in "Weekly Review" )
2. Read for at least 20 minutes every night.
3. Complete at least 30 minutes of math practice.*
*Suggested IXL skills for 3rd grade math practice:
N.1, N2, N.3 Money
For additional practice with money and coins, try 2nd grade skills P.1, P.6, P.7, P.14, P.17 and P.19
*Suggested IXL skills for 4th grade math practice:
B.1 Add up to millions
D.1, D.2, D.4 Multiplication
How To View IXL's Reports
1. Sign in to your student’s account.
2. Click the Reports tab at the top of the page.
3. Customize your report with the options in the green box at the top - this is where you can put in this week's dates to see if your student has completed their 30 minutes of homework.
Under the profile settings, you can also enter your email address to get weekly updates.
This Wednesday, we will go on a tour of the Hillsboro Landfill. We will eat an early lunch in our classroom before getting on the bus at 11:30am. Students who ordered a school lunch will receive a sack lunch. Next week, we will have guest speakers from Metro visit our classroom.
Volunteer Opportunities
Out & About Chaperones are needed for our tour of the Hillsboro Landfill this Wednesday, October 8th. We will leave the school at 11:30 and return by 2:15. Chaperones should plan to ride the school bus (no siblings, please).
Classroom Support
In our classroom, we are lucky to have many volunteers and staff working with students! These volunteers and staff help support a variety of classroom activities and may provide individual or small-group support to students during reading, writing and math. They also help lead activities during project work, academic choice and Out & About. Our current regular classroom helpers are: Erin (Out & About Teacher), Ashley (AmeriCorps Member), Wyatt, Jennifer and Rachel.
Math Notes
Last week in Third Grade Math, we continued our unit on addition, subtraction and place value and began working with money. Students played a game called "Collect $2.00," to review coin values and equivalencies among pennies, dimes and dollars. There are many second grade skills on IXL for students who need additional practice identifying coins and adding/subtracting with money! We are also practicing our problem solving skills on open-ended questions such as, "Laura has 88 cents. What different combinations of coins could she have to equal 88 cents?" Try this with your spare change at home and help your student find all the possible combinations!
Last week in Fourth Grade Math, we continued working on our first unit using Investigations titled “Factors, Multiples and Arrays.” In this unit, students review the multiplication combinations they know, identify the ones they need to work on, and develop strategies for learning them. They solve problems by using arrays. This week we will also focus in solving problems about factors of a number and number relationships, such as: If 25 is a factor of 100, will 25 also be a factor of 300? How do you know? As always, if you have any questions, comments, or concerns, please let me or Becky know ([email protected]).
Weekly Review
We read My Best Friend is as Sharp as a Pencil and My Dog is as Smelly as Dirty Socks by Hanoch Piven. In these funny picture books, a young girl makes portraits of her friends, family and teachers using objects that represent personality traits. For example, her baby brother is so noisy that she creates a picture of him with whistles for eyes, a horn mouth, and a fire truck in his hand. In writing, the Plovers began to write similes and metaphors about themselves! And in art, students are creating found object self-portraits to illustrate their writing. Plovers will bring home a list today of the objects they hope to use in their collages (some more unusual materials may be represented by photos or magazine clippings instead of 3D objects - you do not need to go out and buy supplies!).
Last week, we visited Metro Central in NW Portland to learn about where our garbage goes. This is one place a lot of trash (over 8,000 tons per day!) goes on its way to a landfill or recycling. The video below highlights a lot of the things we were able to see during our visit! We also toured the hazardous waste facility and dropped off old batteries for recycling. Finally, we got to see the trained falcons that live at the transfer station and keep away the gulls!
Please contact me with any questions or concerns. Parents and students can e-mail me at [email protected]. You can also leave a voice message on the class phone, come into the classroom before or after school, or call me before 8PM at home.