Yesterday at morning meeting, I had a lot of students tell me they would be out on Friday.  So that I can plan effectively, please fill in the form (no email address required other than Google Sign in).  The questions are simple and fast.  Will your student be at school on Friday?  If your student is at school on Friday, will you check them out after our class’s family picnic.  Thank you!

https://forms.gle/o1kGMhri8doNnq1K6

Here are the flyers going home today:

Hi parents!  It is time to put on your holiday pants!  We have a a lot of winter activities and holiday festivities planned in the next month.  A kindness elf visits our room for the 12 days before winter break.  We will practice being kind to one another and to everyone we encounter.  Students will all receive a stocking and we will add something to our stocking each day.  Students will take them home on the 20th of December.  I would also love to have parents/families come in and read to our class and share family traditions.  Finally, we do a Winter Cookie Recipe Book & Exchange.  All of the information follows.  Please email or message me with any questions you may have.

Winter Cookie Exchange

** All third grade classes will be participating in a Winter Cookie Exchange. **

PART 1: Your child needs to bring in a favorite family cookie recipe that he/she would like to include in our class Cookie Recipe Book. Please make sure that the measurements, ingredients, and step-by-step directions are provided and are accurate! Please feel free to e-mail me the recipe or we can make a copy  for you at school. Whatever is easiest for you, is fine with me.  (Peterjk@nv.ccsd.net) Your child will be rewriting the recipe at school.

PLEASE HAVE ALL RECIPES TO SCHOOL ON OR BEFORE MONDAY, DECEMBER 2nd!!!

PART 2: You and your child will need to bake TWO DOZEN of your favorite  family cookies and bring them to school on Friday, December 20th for the class Winter Cookie Exchange!!

Thank you for your continued help and support!!

Cookie Decorating

When we exchange cookies, we will also decorate some sugar cookies.  I’ve created a sign up genius for the supplies for this activity.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080448ACAB2AA0FB6-seasonal

Holidays!

Do you have a special activity you do with your family during the holidays? How about a book you read every year?  Would you like to share it with our class?  We’d love to have you.  We love when parents come and read to our class.  Please bring your favorite book and share your family traditions with our classroom.  If you have an activity you’d like to do with the class as well, please bring it!

Examples:  Last year we had a Grinch craft activity, potato latkes, a book read in English and Tagalog, and an ornament decorating activity we worked on with parents.

I’ve created a survey to collect dates and more information about your student here:  https://forms.gle/rktVHRd5Yp7eZ3rr7

Important Upcoming Dates

• 11/22 – Family Picnic
• 11/25-11/29 – No School – Fall Break
• 12/20 – Winter Cookie Exchange

Curriculum

This week will continue to work on mastering the skill of describing the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect in reading.  In math, we will continue to explore concepts relating to area and area measurement.  In writing, we will write a bit about being thankful and practice writing three good things that happened to us each day.

Our homework for the week can be found here:  2019-11-18 Homework

Upcoming Events

• All Week – Conferences as Scheduled
• 11/11 – No School
• 11/12 – Be Kind Day
• 11/13 – PTA Ornament Night at 5:30 PM
• 11/15 – No School for Students – Parent/Teacher Conference Day
• 11/22 – Family Picnic
• 11/25-11/29 – No School – Fall Break

Conferences

I can’t wait to see all of you at conferences.  If you haven’t signed up, please make sure to do so at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/5080448acab2aa0fb6-boelter1.  If you happen to sign up the day of, or the day before a conference, please send me a remind/classcraft/email letting me know so I have everything we need to discuss your student’s progress.  I have most everything prepared, but I do like to make sure that I give you the time and attention you deserve when we meet.

Curriculum

This week we will start our next class novel, How I Survived the Japanese Tsunami.  You can get a little preview here:  https://www.scholastic.com/teachers/videos/teaching-content/i-survived-japanese-tsunami/.  In our first unit, we will work on mastering the skill of describing the relationship between a series of historical events, scientific ideas or concepts, or steps in technical procedures in a text, using language that pertains to time, sequence, and cause/effect.  This book has features a character who is grieving the loss of his father.  This may bring up emotions tied to your student’s personal grief.  We discuss the impact that Ben’s loss has on his character.  Know as we go through this novel, I am mindful that each student may have already experienced loss, and I do my best to talk about those issues as they arise.

In writing, we will begin a performance task on personal narrative.  A performance task is any learning activity or assessment that asks students to perform to demonstrate their knowledge, understanding and proficiency.  As this is our first writing performance task, I will walk students through the process step by step.

In math, we’ve completed multiplication and division and will move onto area.  Our goal is to recognize area as an attribute of plane figures and understand concepts of area measurement. We will work on some hands on activities to get better acquainted with the area and how to determine the area of a shape this week.

In science, we started our life cycle unit and will work on analyzing and interpreting data to provide evidence that plants and animals have traits inherited from parents and that variation of these traits exists in a group of similar organisms.

Thanks to everyone who has sent in a totem.  This is my one “at home” project of the year.  I personally enjoy it because I get to know all of you and your families so much better.  Also, thanks for your get better messages!  I am closing in on 100%.

Homework:  2019-11-12 Homework  or 2019-11-12s Homework

 

Hi, parents! As your student probably has communicated to you, I got hit with a bug this week.  The good news is that my voice is coming back.  The less than great news is that I’ve had to get more rest and do a little bit less, including missing some school.  I wanted to check in with you and let you know that all is well and I’m on the mend.  This week’s homework is here:  2019-11-04 Homework

Also, this week is Red Ribbon week.

Red Ribbon Week was started after the death of Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena, who in 1985 was brutally tortured and murdered by drug traffickers he was investigating in Mexico. As a tribute to SA Camarena, high school friend, Henry Lozano and Congressman Duncan Hunter, created “Camarena Clubs” and the wearing of a red ribbon to show their oppositions to drugs.

In 1988, the National Family Partnership coordinated the first National Red Ribbon Week with President and Mrs. Reagan serving as honorary Chairpersons. Since then, the Red Ribbon campaign has taken on national significance, and NFP continues to coordinate the campaign for families, schools and communities across the nation each year. Wearing red ribbons during the month of October continues to represent our pledge to live drug free and honors the sacrifice of all who have lost their lives in the fight against drugs.

Tomorrow is polka dot day!

This week, we’ll revisit our growth mindset goals.  We will learn a little about expectations the story of Josh Waitzkin.  You might not expect a child chess prodigy to later become a world champion martial artist, but that’s exactly with Josh Waitzkin did.

Ask your students if they believe they can do anything.  Together we can make them believe that they can do just that… anything.  When you have ten minutes, watch this video.  I was fortunate enough to take a class led by Dweck at Stanford. The science behind it is real and proven.  We all can learn anything.

Upcoming Events

• 10/29 –  Field Trip to Springs Preserve
• 10/31 –  Halloween
• 10/31 – Costume Free Dress Day
• 10/31 – 3rd Grade Spooky Buffet

Homework

I am including fluency homework this week.  Even if students complete electronic homework, they must complete fluency each night.  Students will read the same passage out loud for one minute and repeat this process two times.  When the timer complete record how many words your student completed in that one minute.  There is no homework on Halloween night.

Force & Motion

Before jumping into brainstorming our board games, I worked with the students to review the concepts of force and motion by creating paper airplanes and testing how far they would fly.  We also attempted to create an origami boomerang.  This turned into a lesson on growth mindset and perseverance.  Some students struggled with the concepts required to create the boomerang and became frustrated.  I encouraged students to give it a try at home as well.

To start our week this week, we will do an outside of the box coding assignment (hands on) which reviews the concept of perseverance, even when things get tough.  We have worked hard since August, and this will be a great reminder for students.  We don’t always do everything perfectly the first time, and not only is that okay, but our brain grows exponentially when we struggle.  Those who had students in my classroom last year know that my favorite song lyric is “there’s beauty in the struggle,” (Brandi Carlile) and we’ll practice understanding just that this week.

Curriculum

This week in math students started some intense work in division.  We will continue to work through this standard next week and further our understanding of the relationship between multiplication and division.  I have some fun project based learning adventures planned this week for these concepts as well.

In reading, we will continue to work on note taking with informational text passages, and improve our ability to ask and answer questions by referring explicitly to the text for an answer. We will also learn about Tsunamis in preparation for our next class novel. In writing, we will work on understanding temporal or transition words in narrative writing and continue our draft of our marker mistake.

Students will also enjoy some Halloween themed curriculum.  This is going to be a fun week!

Parent Teacher Conferences

I will send out a signup this week and start to conduct parent teacher conferences next week.  I do my best to accommodate everyone’s schedule.  I’ll use a signup genius for that process as well.

Springs Preserve

We go to the Springs Preserve with the entire grade level on Tuesday.  If you have not completed a field trip form at this time, your student will likely not be able to attend.  We’ve split students into groups with chaperones.  We have already reserved hot lunches with the office based on student responses.  I have four signups for hot lunch.  We will leave the preserve at 12:00 and return to school.

Spooky Buffet & Trunk or Treat

The Spooky Buffet is on Halloween.  Students will line up and partake in some spooky treats.  If you would like to help serve students or help setup the buffet tables, please let me know.  Students will also participate in Trunk or Treat on the same day.  Please know that simulated weapons (guns, knives, axes, etc.), masks, and face paint are not permitted.

Thanks for all that you do!  This week is going to be a great one!

This week’s homework:  2019-10-28 Homework

Hi!  I hope everyone is recovered from our feast.  I can’t express how much I appreciate everything that everyone contributed to make this such a success. Thanks to everyone who has sent in snacks, too!  We are set!

Onto this week…. I know I’ve said it before, but please practice math facts with your kids for 10 minutes each night.  This week we will start division and the students who have not developed strategies will become extremely frustrated.  We practice them in class daily, too!

We learned so much about so many countries in the past month!

Important Dates to Remember

• 10/23 – Picture Retakes
• 10/25 – No school
• 10/29 –  Field Trip to Springs Preserve
• 10/31 – 3rd Grade Spooky Buffet

Curriculum

This week in math, we worked on multiples of 10. Next week, we will dive into division.   Our standard requires that students demonstrate the ability to fluently multiply and divide within 100, using strategies such as the relationship between multiplication and division (e.g., knowing that 8 × 5 = 40, one knows 40 ÷ 5 = 8).  Our year end goal is to know from memory all products of two one-digit numbers.

In reading, we will move to informational text and tackle asking and answering questions by referring explicitly to the text for an answer.  We will also learn about Tsunamis in preparation for our next class novel.  In writing, we will work on developing strong hooks in narrative writing and continue our draft of our marker mistake.

In science, we will work on creating our own board game.  Students will first brainstorm and then research ideas for their idea of a perfect board game.

Progress Reports

I sent home progress reports on Friday.  If you have any questions about student performance, please reach out to me so we can discuss.

Spooky Buffet

Each year, we have a spooky buffet in our hall for the third grade on Halloween.  We make fun names for grapes, pretzel sticks, and marshmallows.  We will need parents to help serve and setup.  We’ve also created a joint signup genius for this event.  Our hall includes Mrs. Winslow and Mrs. Yohannes. The signup genius is here:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70a0945adad22a5f94-spooky

This week’s homework:  2019-10-21 Homework

Thank you so much for the amazing Hispanic Heritage contributions.  I picked up the kids from specials, and they ate… and ate… and ate!  Everything was delicious.  This community we’re making is pretty extraordinary.  Your students had a great day, shared some culture, and filled their bellies.  Here are some pictures from the day’s events.  Ask your students about their favorite part of the day!

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1P4WiSqzHEUmJipoPV12h6sVJ_lJz1TV0?usp=sharing

Morning Announcements

Our class leads morning announcements tomorrow morning.

The following students will be presenting tomorrow:  Nikko, Samantha, Ella B., Eli, and Max.

Students can come to my room to practice in the morning at 8:40.  I will pick them up on the dot.  All students should place their backpacks on the dot before the music starts to play for lineup.  When the music plays, students should line up on the stage.  Remember, you represent all of us while you are up there!

Curriculum and Happenings

We had another great week this week!  We finished up our properties of multiplication unit, continued writing our narratives about a marker mistake, and closed out a novel and a unit on character traits which included explaining how their actions contribute to the sequence of events.

This week, we have a lot to do!  We have a field trip on Tuesday.  If you’ve not turned in your field trip forms, your student will stay with another class while we are at the Writer’s Block.  Parents who are chaperoning, I will reach out to you individually.

We are also starting multiples of ten in math, working on a project to close out our first three standards in reading, and defining and practicing parts of a narrative in writing.  We have a full week ahead!  We also have our Hispanic Heritage Feast on Friday!  The kids are excited about this and so am I!

Thanks for your continued support!  Together, we make a great team!

This week’s homework:  2019-10-14 Homework