January 27-31 The Great Kindness Challenge
January 27 Book Orders Due
January 29 Make Up PE @ 12:15
January 30 & 31 No School
February 3 Library Visit
No Homework Due This Week
Upcoming Out and Abouts
There is no school on Thursday and we will not have an Out and About this week. In February, we will be working with Theatre in the Grove weekly to learn about and practice public speaking, story telling and performing.
Other Important Info
I will be out of town January 29th and February 3rd (there is no school on 1/30 and 1/31), and Teri Melof will sub for me. Teri is an experienced FGCS substitute teacher and she also completed her student teaching at the Community School! She has worked will the Plovers before in Art. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Scholastic Book Orders
Orders are due TODAY (Monday, January 27th). I will submit the order Tuesday morning. You can view this month's selections and submit your order at https://orders.scholastic.com/L79X9. When you place your order online, you'll help earn free books for our class. It takes about 2 weeks for books to arrive.
Math Notes
In Third Grade Math, we continued to review material covered in the beginning of the year, including place value, estimation, telling time and solving story problems. We also began our unit on multiplication and division with two fun games: Loops & Groups and Cover Up. I've included a PDF of Loops & Groups so your student can teach you how to play! In this unit, students will develop an understanding of both multiplication and division by connecting their work to a variety of visual models, mostly in the context of story problems. Although students will be expected to develop proficiency with multiplication facts through 10 by the end of the year, knowing when to multiply and when to divide will be the focus of our upcoming investigations.
Last week Fourth Grade Mathematicians continued to develop multiplication fluency with both single and double-digit numbers. Students also reviewed addition and subtraction with borrowing and carrying; and completed a few short assessments. Towards the end of the week, we also began our next math puzzle involving algebraic thinking. Ask your fourth grader about the California Frog Jumping Competition and Rosie the Ribbiter.
Weekly Review
Last week, we started talking about The Great Kindness Challenge, which is taking place January 27 - 31. The Great Kindness Challenge is one week dedicated to creating a culture of kindness on campuses nationwide. Our school is proudly participating in this positive anti-bullying initiative. All students have received a Great Kindness Challenge checklist with 50 kind deeds. Some of the deeds can be done at school and some can be done as a family. Please encourage your child to complete the checklist and show the world that KINDNESS MATTERS!
To prepare for The Great Kindness Challenge, students created posters, badges, pictures and cards. We also decorated our hallway with Love Monsters! Each student created a large Love Monster alter-ego and hung it up along the ramp. We designed the monsters to have big mouths with pockets hidden in the back, so it would be easy to feed them. Feed them what exactly? Kindness cookies! The class came up with an idea for "kindness cookies," which are small paper tokens that you can feed to someone's Love Monster when you see them doing something kind or helpful. We agreed not to peek in the Love Monsters tummies until Valentines Day, when we will open them up and celebrate all the kind deeds done this month!
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, come into the classroom before or after school, or call me before 8PM at home.