October 19 Riverkeepers Permission Slip Due
October 19 All Day O&A - Chaperones Needed
October 21 No School
October 24 All School Meeting and Spirit Day - Favorite Character
October 27-28 Goal Setting Conferences (No School)
Homework Due by Thursday, October 20th
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 on Typing.com (remember, you can log in with your FGCS Google account!)
Upcoming Out and Abouts - Chaperones Needed
This Wednesday, we will leave school at 9:30 and meet the Tualatin Riverkeepers at Fanno Creek in Tigard. There, students will rotate through four activities to learn about river health, native wildlife, and how litter and other forms of pollution can impact the environment. At one station, they will put on gloves and help clean up litter from river banks! Students will not be entering the water. However, boots and rain gear are highly recommended. After our activities, we will take a bus to a nearby park for lunch. Students who ordered a school lunch will get a sack lunch that contains a sandwich, fresh fruit, fresh vegetable and milk.
Weekly Review
Thank you for all the pumpkin book project donations! Last week, the Plovers started learning about literary essays in writing workshop! First, students participated in "essay boot camp" to learn about essay structure and build writing stamina. Each student developed an opinion (their thesis statement) about ice cream and wrote a 4 paragraph essay! Next, they chose a familiar book to re-read, paying close attention to a character's traits, struggles, changes and life lessons. They wrote notes about their characters and made a plan for their pumpkin design. This week, we will work on making an important claim (thesis statement) about a character and collecting evidence from the text to support the claim. Plovers will start decorating their pumpkins in Art this week. Parents are invited to see our pumpkin display during student-led conferences! After the presentation, pumpkins will be sent home with students on 10/31.
We had a great visit to the Forest Grove Library this afternoon! Students learned about the organization of the library and checked out books. If you would like to get a library card for your family or Plover, please visit the library (you must register in person). I will check out books for students who do not have a library card, but these books must stay in the classroom. We will visit the library approximately every three weeks and I will post visits dates in the "upcoming events" schedule at the top of the newsletter. The library requires us to have 2-3 additional chaperones to supervise students. In my experience, the students have been very well behaved and independent in the library, so the chaperone's job is minimal! Mostly, you would be helping students locate and check out books using the self scanner, or accompanying pairs of students to the restrooms and water fountain. Library visits typically happen on Mondays from 1:45 - 3:00, and as soon as I have a schedule of our visits for the rest of the year, I will post a chaperone sign up!
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.