January 22 Library Visit
January 25-26 No School
January 30 Scholastic Orders Due
February 1 All Day O&A to Portland
February 2 FGCS Geography Bee
Homework Due by Thursday, January 25th
1. Read for at least 20 minutes every night.
2. Complete at least 30 minutes of math practice
3. Complete at least 20 minutes of typing practice.
4. Optional: Complete Paragraph of the Week writing assignment.
Prompt: Write about a time when you taught somebody how to do something.
Upcoming Out and Abouts
This week, Plovers will continue work on their stop motion animation. Next week, we will go see the Oregon Symphony on Thursday, February 1st. Students who ordered a school lunch for this day will receive a sack lunch.
Scholastic Reading Clubs
Class Code: L79X9
Order Due Date: 1/30/18 by 9:00pm
You can view this month's selections and submit your order online at https://orders.scholastic.com/L79X9. When you place your order online, you'll help earn FREE books for our class!
Geography Bee
This week, we will begin the preliminary rounds of the National Geographic Bee to determine the Plover class representative. There are 7 rounds of competition and each student individually answers a question in every round. The questions are about US and World geography. In some rounds, students receive multiple answers to choose from and in other rounds, the questions are open-ended. For more information, please visit: http://www.nationalgeographic.org/bee. Only 4th-8th graders are allowed to participate in the National Bee, so 3rd grade Plovers just play along for practice! Next year, they'll have an opportunity to represent our class. I expect we will finish the class competition by January 30th to determine our class representation for the school-wide Geo Bee on February 2nd!
Volunteer Opportunities
Additional snack donations - I like to keep some extra snacks in the classroom for students who forget their lunch or snack, and my stash is getting low! Breakfast bars, fruit leathers or fruit snacks, crackers, goldfish or pretzels are all great options. These donations can be brought in any time.
Weekly Review
During lunch last week, we watched a documentary called Mad, Hot Ballroom. It is a movie about elementary school students in New York City who participate in ballroom dancing classes and competitions. As we watched these classrooms prepare all year long for the final competition, we were able to discuss what character traits like perseverance, good sportsmanship and focus look like in other students. It also helped get the Plovers excited about having a guest teacher from Oregon Ballet Theatre meet us at Forest Grove Dance Arts for our Out & About! Students practiced moving in time with music and using their bodies to show different emotions - powerful, shy, happy and sad. We stretched and did some dance exercises together, and then students worked in small groups to choreograph short dances that showed an important moment from a fairy tale. We will keep working on dance and storytelling in class as we finish up our fairy tale projects and get ready to see the Alice in Wonderland ballet on March 1st!
Last week, we took a break from our classroom jobs and made some changes to how the classroom economy will work. Many students were unable to pay their rent this month, so we spent a lot of time as a class trying to figure out how to make sure that everyone was doing their job, budgeting their money, earning bonus pay and paying their bills. For the rest of the year, students will be paying $50 a month into a vacation fund instead of paying $50 for rent. Once a month, the class will have an afternoon "vacation" to a new country and students will help plan fun activities related to our destination! Plovers who cannot pay their rent/vacation fee will have alternative assignments and stewardship jobs to complete during the vacation day. Our first vacation will take place on February 22nd, so students have an entire month to earn money and save up for our trip!
Communication
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 or set up a time to meet with me before/after school.