November 10 Fund Run donations due - Turn into the office
November 11 No School
November 12 All day O&A to Portland
November 12-14 Laura at conference; Darell Winterbourne will sub
November 21 Lunch Orders Due
November 24-28 Thanksgiving Break - No School
Homework Due Thursday, November 13th
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:
Try the 2nd and 4th grade skills about tally charts and bar graphs!
2nd grade: R.2, R.3, R.4, R.5
4th grade: J.4 and J.5
*Suggested IXL skills for 4th grade math practice:
J.1 - J.8 Data & Graphs
Upcoming Out and Abouts
This week, we will visit the Oregon Historical Society to view their exhibit on plastics and learn more about Oregon's resources. The bus will leave at 9:15am, so please make sure your student arrives on time. We will eat lunch outside and visit the Farmer's Market in Shemanski Park, so students need to be prepared for the cold weather!
Volunteer Opportunities
We need donations, especially fresh fruit, for Community Breakfast this Friday, November 14th and next week, November 21st. Clementines, grapes or bananas (12 bananas are usually enough because I cut them in half) are all Plover favorites! Please sign up on VolunteerSpot if you're able to donate. Thank you!
Math Notes
If you are looking for ways to incorporate more math into your family's daily routine, here are some ideas and resources:
Mixing In Math - Ten everyday math activities that build math into the things most families already do, such as figuring out ways to save money, to share fairly, or to get somewhere on time.
Finding the Math in Everyday Activities - Questions to ask your child during daily activities to encourage mathematical thinking.
Mathematics on the Go - Math activities for the car or bus.
In third grade math, we developed a survey question to ask all the students at FGCS! The third grade mathematicians agreed on the question: "Where is your favorite place to shop?" Then, they made materials for each classroom explaining the project and requesting the other students' help. So far, we have received over 140 responses with answers like Build-A-Bear, Amazon, "the make up counter at the mall" and Goodwill! Next, we will decide how to classify all the data from other classrooms and begin to develop representations of the responses.
This week in fourth grade math, we will continue our work in the second unit from Investigations, "Describing the Shape of the Data." We are firmly into organizing the analyzing data. This week we will have the opportunity to organize and analyze our Fund Run data, as well as continue our survey work and have opportunities to practice finding the mean, median, and mode of various data sets. As always, if you have any questions, comments or concerns, please feel free to contact me ([email protected]).
Weekly Review
Academic Choice is a weekly opportunity for students to work on their personal goals or pursue other interests in the classroom. Plovers must complete their homework by Thursday morning to be able to participate in Academic Choice. So far this year, students have enjoyed projects like building a model of Metro Central with Erin, watercolor painting with Wyatt, creating skits based on classroom read alouds, writing scripts for imaginary news reports, and composing haunted house real estate listings! Last week I introduced some new options for Academic Choice that will require a longer commitment from students (2-6 weeks, depending on the project) and provide them with opportunities to learn something new!
New Academic Choice options:
Hour of Code - This website teaches the basic concepts of Computer Science with drag and drop programming. Students can also learn how to use Skratch, which is a program that allows them to code their own interactive animations and stories.
DuoLingo - A free app and website for learning a new language! Plovers can learn some basic German vocabulary through fun games and audio clips, and then share their new knowledge with their pen pals!
Readers Theater - Ashley Vincent will be working with a small group of students on preparing a few readers theater plays. In readers theater, the focus is on reading with expression instead of performing with costumes and props.
Sock Monsters - I'll be crafting little stuffed creatures with students interested in learning how to sew. They can make a little monster buddy for themselves or as a gift!
Ramp Design - I'm calling on our future engineers and interior designers to transform the entrance to the Plovers' Nest! Once the students propose a plan, I may need parent volunteers to help with this big, messy project!
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.