Hiiii, parents. We were named the Thunder Boelters a few years back and it stuck. What can we do this year to make our team uniform and groovy? We put bolts on pennants one year. We could do tshirts with Thunderbolts. Ideas? Help! 🙂
Tomorrow night is meet and greet. Come join me for a session.
Hey parents! Fun run information is coming home today. They added a new feature this year as well. 10% will be coming back to each classroom teacher. This is awesome because it will immediately effect your students. I’ll roll out the website information this afternoon. I am so excited!
Edit: here is our page
https://stuckey2019.pledge-drive.net
You can look up each student from there. 🙂
We learned so much this week! Students are getting a better idea of how to complete tasks and assessments independently as 3rd graders.
Ask your student about finding arrays in all you see around you. Our math curriculum pace really picks up at this point in the year, and it is so important that students are practicing math facts each night. It helps so much! Students love to tell me when they practice with you! Students can use Freckle, their flashcards, and Prodigy to really hone in on those facts. Right now, our math goal is to have a mental strategy for all multiplication math facts through 12. In math this week, we will start working on the properties of multiplication.
In reading, we finished up answering questions by citing textual evidence. We took an assessment on Friday. Those results will make their way home next week. Next week, we will work to determine the central message, lesson, or moral of text, and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text. In writing, we made progress on our first major revision to our first published writing, and worked on a benchmark narrative writing assessment.
As we progress into the fall, our content and responsibility rises in grade 3. We all look for inventive ways to challenge your students and make sure we are reaching them.
This week’s homework: 2019-09-16 Homework
We have two field trips tentatively scheduled for October. I’ll need volunteers for all of them and I’ll send home paperwork this week. You must be badged to be a field trip volunteer.
Wednesday is Open House from 5:30 to 7 pm. We’ll have three sessions in every classroom. The sessions will last 20 minutes. This is the current schedule for those sessions:
5:30 – 5:50 Rotation 1
6:00 – 6:20 Rotation 2
6:30 – 6:50 Rotation 3
I dress like a pirate on Pirate Day, which is Thursday, September 19. I encourage your student to do the same. No weapons, please!
9/18 – Open House
9/19 – Pirate Day
9/27 – Free Dress (Sports Teams)
9/27 – Fun Run
Game Night was amazing! Thanks to everyone who was able to attend and to all of you who picked up games to play with your families. I loved seeing all of you sitting at tables and playing together.
Thanks again for all the help in the classroom, for all that you do at home, and making this week another wonderful week. I am thankful for all of you!
I am sending home progress reports today. You will quite possibly see missing assignments. Some students finished those today before they left my class, and I will be updating the grades soon. A handful of students who did not complete a health/readworks assignment in class.
If your student has missing assignments, it is their responsibility to finish them. I open my classroom every Wednesday-Friday during lunch recess to allow for extra work time. I also work unfinished work time into my reading and math blocks.
Most of these grades are classwork grades. Though students should take responsibility and complete all work, know we are at end of year mastery yet. Please reach out with any concerns. Thanks for your understanding.
You’ll note that the reports are stapled. I’ve stapled them because I am giving the reports to students at the end of the day, and they are often distracted and have difficulty lining up when they are in their mailboxes during dismissal. Thanks again for all that you do!
I wanted to remind everyone that tonight is GameWright night! We are going to have so much fun! You can try out all the games and order or pick up your favorite copies. All of these are dice, board, or card like games. I’ll be there until we close. 🙂
We talked about 9-11 today and watched a BrainPop (cartoon) about what happened on 9-11. We talked about heroes and what a hero is. Some students are sensitive to the events that transpired on that day. I made sure to offer time on the couch or with a pillow if they needed a break. I also reminded them that if they ever need to talk to anyone, all of the teachers here at Stuckey are here for them. Check in with your students when they get home tonight. 🙂 They are awesomely sweet souls.
Thank you for another amazing week. We made it through a lot this week, even though we only had four days!
In reading, we closed up text to text, text to self, and text to world ideas, and worked on reading with sufficient accuracy and fluency to support comprehension; a skill we will work on all year. We also finished our first round of strategies for learning multiplication facts through 12. In writing, we worked on our final draft of our first published writing. We also learned that magnets are weird and we created our own bridges out of paper! After creating our bridges, we added weight and revised our designs to make them stronger. The kids had a great time!
This week, we will also start moving through our reading centers. Each day we will practice one of our centers while continuing to build upon previously learned concepts.
In math, we will work on strategies for solving multiplication facts. We will also work on multiplication fluency throughout the week. Please encourage your students to practice their multiplication facts. This is the foundation for 3rd grade mathematics and when students get behind in multiplication facts, it can cause them to approach more difficult application problems with less confidence. When they are confident, they’ll try anything!
Our class has started a 40 book challenge in Classcraft. As they finish a certain number of books as a table, they will gain XP and gold, and move onto another task. For this reason, I will not have students log reading nightly. They have the option of doing paper or electronic homework every night, which they do need to log.
9/9-9/13 Fall Book Fair
9/11 – Gamewright Game Night (Please come and join me!)
9/13 – Grandparents Breakfast (Thank you PTA!)
9/18 – Open House
9/19 – Pirate Day
This week’s homework: 2019-09-09 Homework
Your students may have mentioned that I told them I would like to come see what they do outside of school. So, if your student participates in athletics, team sports or individually, academic teams outside of Stuckey, gaming tournaments, or any other organized event about which they are passionate, I’d love to come watch. If you can provide me their schedule, I’ll send you a message the day before a game or event to verify that they are participating. I like students to know that I am invested in everything they do. Thank you!
Your students made it through a more considerable academic week this week. We worked on reading standards with our first novel, found many strategies to solve multiplication problems, and finished our writing community setup.
You likely noticed that your students have been building their own set of multiplication facts flash cards for homework. We have finished both sets. I’ve asked students to bring in their “at home” set so I can check them. The strategies students have learned thus for for solving multiplication equations are equal groups, doubling, finding patterns, and skip counting.
Students will also start listening to their multiplication songs! If you indicated you would prefer a CD, that will come home on Tuesday. Happy listening!
For your reference, here are the strategies we’ve been learning. I will send a paper copy home as well. Please encourage your students to use them when completing homework. We’ll also learn all about arrays this week.
We made it through logging into programs for digital homework. This week, students will have a choice. Students can complete paper homework or digital homework. If they complete digital homework, they should complete the digital homework log. I check all of our homework sites daily for completion and the log helps me verify and give credit for that work. If students prefer paper homework, it must come back every day. Students are required to get your signature on their planner page every night. Students are required to write their homework in their planner daily. Here is this week’s homework: 2019-09-03 Homework
Many of our 3rd grade standards differ from second grade standards by requiring students to work independently. You will notice that I will require each student to take complete responsibility for their work in the next couple of weeks. We will transition from “with assistance” to independence. This means that if your student is missing work, it is their responsibility to turn it in. If they do not put their name on their work, it is their responsibility to check the no name basket and claim graded work that doesn’t have a name. I handed out missing work detail sheets on Friday. For those students who did not turn in work, I reminded them to check the no name basket. Next Friday, I will send the same sheet home to you. This allows them to start taking responsibility for what they do in class. All of our assignments have been classwork assignments so far. If they are missing one, it’s a minimal amount of their overall grade, but with so few assignments, it helps them to understand the importance of putting their name on work and handing it in.
9/2 – No School – Labor Day
9/4 – Fall Pictures
9/6 – Pizza Friday
9/6 – Free Dress Day – Superhero Day
9/9-9/13 Fall Book Fair
9/11 – Gamewright Game Night (Please come and join me!)
9/13 – Grandparents Breakfast (Thank you PTA!)
9/18 – Open House
9/19 – Pirate Day
Hi, parents!
Your students will probably tell you that I had to excuse myself before lunch today. We’ve had a little family emergency, and though I don’t like being away from my students at this time of year, it couldn’t be avoided. Things are looking better, though and I should be in tomorrow absent any change. Thanks for your understanding. Know everything is okay!
Hi Parents,
8/26 – SOT Meeting
9/2 – No School – Labor Day
9/4 – Fall Pictures
9/6 – Pizza Friday
9/6 – Free Dress Day – Superhero Day
9/9-9/13 Fall Book Fair
9/11 – Gamewright Game Night
9/13 – Grandparents Breakfast (Thank you PTA!)
9/18 – Open House
I hope you had a wonderful second week of school! We introduced a lot of new concepts and learned so much this week. We also finished MAPs testing! Yay!
In reading, we will continue reading our first class novel, How to Be Cool in 3rd Grade. As we start this novel, students will work on asking and answering questions to demonstrate an understanding of what they are reading, root words, new vocabulary, and describing characters in a story.
In math, students will continue to develop strategies for understanding how groups of items create multiplication sentences, and expand to skip counting specific fact sets.
In writing, we will start a rough draft of a narrative about a time when we were All In (in coordination with our classroom theme) and will start revising next week while we continue to expand our writing community.
We jumped into Google Classroom this week. Students are learning how to navigate Google Classroom for Classroom assignments, and eventually some homework.
Speaking of learning sites, students logged into Xtramath, EPIC Books, ST Math, and Prodigy this week as well. We have a few more programs to roll out for in class and homework use. These sites are always available at Sites Used In Class.
This week’s homework includes a fluency passage for 3 nights and a digital homework log for reading and math. I am asking students to log into a math or reading program each night for 15 minutes. Students will also complete their math flash cards for their remaining multiples. I try to make sure students have options for homework so they are more invested in the process. This week, we will work on logging into these programs at home. If you have any questions or need help logging into any program, please let me know. (I know this can seem overwhelming. I’m here to help!) 2019-08-26 Homework
I’ve enjoyed hearing all about your students in their Me Stew presentations. Thank you so much for helping them gather the needed items for this project.
Finally, we are working on completing assessments for beginning of year benchmarks for all students. I will reach out to you in the next couple of weeks to set up a time so we can conference and review your student’s progress.
We are listening to multiplication songs in class. For those who indicated they would prefer CDs, I will distribute those next week. For those who said a digital download works, here are multiplication raps:
1s Rap
2s-Rap
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3s-rap-
[/audio]
4s-rap
[/audio]
5s-rap
[/audio]
6s-rap
[/audio]
7s-rap
[/audio]
8s-rap[/audio]
9s-rap-[/audio]
10s-rap[/audio]
11s-rap[/audio]
12-rap[/audio]
Download all of the songs at once from Google Drive: Google Drive Link
Thanks so much for all that you do! I am so happy we are in this together. As always, if you have any questions, please reach out.
Warm Regards,
Ms. Boelter
Ms. B. in Class 