January 8 Geography Bee
January 9 All School Meeting and Spirit Day
January 12 Library Visit - Chaperones Needed
January 19 No School
January 21 Beauty and the Beast Show @ 10:30am
Homework Due Thursday, January 8th
1. Read for at least 20 minutes every night.
2. Complete Reading Response Letter OR Opinion Paragraph Packet
3. Complete at least 30 minutes of math practice*
*Suggested IXL skills for 3rd grade math practice:
Q.3 (Measure with inch ruler)
Review 2nd grade measurement skills S.3, S.4, S.8 and S.9
*Suggested IXL skills for 4th grade math practice:
Student's Choice (review any concept you worked on in 2014)
Upcoming Out and Abouts
We will use our Out & About time this month for Science Labs! Level 2 students will be exploring electricity and magnets through lots of hands-on activities and student-led Science Talks. Over Winter Break, I learned we received a grant through Donor's Choose and funded by Chevron to purchase 12 Snap Circuit sets and science texts to help with our investigations!
Volunteer Opportunities - http://vols.pt/drMimF
Please sign up on VolunteerSpot to donate food for our Friday Community Breakfasts this month. Library chaperones are also needed for Monday, January 12th. Thank you for your support!
Math Notes
Third grade mathematicians are moving into a study of geometry and measurement. We will begin this week by measuring the length of objects around the classroom and finding benchmarks for common units of measurement, such as an inch and a meter. Encourage your Plover or Puffin to estimate and measure length in practical situations at home, like sewing or home improvement projects! This unit will also cover perimeter (the length of the border of a figure) and area (the measure of how much flat space a figure covers), as well as characteristic of polygons.
This week, the fourth grade math students will try something new -- Math Congress. Math Congress is a process supported by the math curriculum Context for Learning. Students are provided with "juicy" math problems and must work with a partner to solve the problem, prove their thinking, and organize their information in a way that is easy for others to learn from. This week students will focus on developing an open array model for multiplication and division in the context of Muffles' Truffles shop. As always, if you have questions/comments/concerns, please let me or Becky know ([email protected])
Weekly Review
Before Winter Break, we began 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: www.nationalgeographic.com/geobee. Only 4th-8th graders are allowed to participate in the National Bee, so Plovers who are 3rd graders just play along for practice! Next year, they'll have an opportunity to represent our class. We will finish our class competition by Wednesday to determine our class representation for the school-wide Geo Bee on Thursday!
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.