Sleep in, watch the parade, enjoy family, give thanks, overeat, and cheer on your football team! Have a great week off, we only have 3 weeks left of the semester when we return. Happy Thanksgiving!
This is our Thanksgiving break week, so I hope everyone has a chance to rest and enjoy the time with family. I am not going to do my usual update this week, as it is my time off as well. I just wanted to remind you to read 4 times for 20 minutes and log it. I also sent home an energy worksheet. I don't expect any of this to take much time. Also, book orders are due the Monday we come back.
Sleep in, watch the parade, enjoy family, give thanks, overeat, and cheer on your football team! Have a great week off, we only have 3 weeks left of the semester when we return. Happy Thanksgiving!
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These past two weeks have been crazy with our short day schedules, conferences, and trying to get in all the academics into a short day. Things are finally starting to clam down.
I want to thank all parents for coming to our conference on time, and getting them all in during the days allotted. It was great to see everyone again, and to meet a few new faces. Your involvement in your child's education is what makes Vintage and great school, our classroom function well, and your child successful. The collaboration of teacher/parent/student instills the importance of education into each child. This past week we took our end of Unit 2 assessment in Language Arts. The Community Projects were also due this past week. I must say how impressed I am at the creativity that went into these models. Due to the short days, we did not have time to really set them out and look at them yet. However, I have blocked time out in our day this Monday to clear our desks and step up the Room 19 Community. Pictures to come! Usually we would be starting Unit 3 this week, but we will be putting the new unit off until we return from Thanksgiving break. This is because the district has asked us to assess the students in writing. This past week we did a practice writing of an opinion piece to prepare the class. This week we will be finishing up Math Topic 12 on Fractions. I know I had explained before, and to a few parents during conferences, but I want to remind you of the situation again. With the new Common Core Standards, we had to rewrite the pacing for Math, taking out lessons, and adding others. Then, we were suddenly given the district Math assessment and saw it was on fractions, a topic we were not going to cover until after Winter break. So, we moved things around and started working on fractions right away. This Thursday we will be taking the District Math Assessment. When you get some of the homework, you will see that it will ask to put a fraction in simplest terms. I have not been able to teach this, since we have not learned about division yet. When you see this on the homework, just have them write an equivalent fraction. I'm sorry for any confusion this may cause, and I know the situation can be frustrating, bear with me. We have finished Unit 2 in our Social Studies about the California Native Americans. In class we will be working in groups on informational posters and giving presentations. However, I will be sending home a take-home test to measure individual understanding. This is an open book test and consists of 12 multiple choice questions. This should not take long to do. This Friday is a minimum day, and NASA Night begins at 5:30. Due to these situations, we will be unable to attend Science Lab on that day. To make sure we keep on top of our new investigation of energy, I am sending home a page for homework over the break. This should take no more than 30 min to fill out, so I'm not asking for too much of your break time. Instructions and examples come with the sheet, but if you have any questions, please email me. On a final note (pun intended), we are continuing to work on our holiday program songs. I realized that I did not include the names of the songs in my blog last week, so let me make up for it this week. We are singing "Holiday Lights" and "Kindled by the Flame." I hope everyone is enjoying the extra day off for Veterans Day. Be sure to take a moment to thank those who have served our country and fought to keep our freedom. As a class we made thank you cards, which I dropped off at our local VFW.
This past week I have begun to meet with parents to discuss student grades, set goals, talk about concerns, and praise the good. I look forward to getting to see everyone again. I think it is wonderful how involved the parents of room 19 are! Please let me know if you are unable to make our conference appointment, this way I can reschedule a time or we can decide to have a phone conference. This week is a short week with only 4 days, all of which are not full instructional days. Tuesday is our typical banked day, Wednesday through Friday are Minimum days. We will be putting in as much instruction as possible, to ensure the students are getting a thorough education. We will be continuing to learn about fractions this week, with more of a hands on approach. Health, Science, P.E., and Social Studies will be touched upon at times between the primary academics. This is week 6 of Unit 2 in Language Arts. This week focuses on assessing the skills learned during the unit, and culminating with a project. Project assignments were given several weeks ago for a Community Organization. Those projects are due Tuesday, November 12. This week we will also be working on a practice writing assessment. We will be taking the district writing assessment next week. Finally, this past week we have begun to learn the songs for our Holiday Program performance. We started learning the music to our first song, and the 3rd grade teachers have been impressed with how quickly the students are picking it up. It seems this class is musically inclined. Once we have learned both songs, I will be encouraging the students to start to memorize the words. This past week was full of fun! Along with Halloween festivities, the class got to do some candy corn math, finished the basics of multiplication, ended our Life Science unit in Science, and finished 2nd Step as we'll.
This week we will be starting Topic 12 in math, covering Fractions. Typically we would not start fractions until after Winter Break, but we just received the district assessment for Math and found it is on fractions. As this test is due early December, we have had to adjust our math pacing. This is our last story week for Unit 2: Neighborhoods and Communities. That also means that this is the last week to work on Community Organization projects and models. Let me know if your child needs ideas or clarification on their model. This week we start conferences! We will be discussing your child's progress and addressing any concerns. I have scheduled conferences every 20 minutes, so please try your best to be on time so that we do not run over into another appointment's time. If we cannot discuss things within that 20 minutes, I will schedule a follow up conference. I would like your child to attend as well, but if you would like to discuss things without them, you may choose to do so. If you have not scheduled a conference yet, please contact me soon. I will be sending out appointment confirmations on Monday. I mentioned before that we finished 2nd Step. This is a program to teach empathy, problem solving skills, calming down methods, self-control, and promote anti-bullying. Please discuss these at home, and encourage your child to practice the skills they learned. A reminder to set you clocks back one hour tonight for Daylight Savings. Also, Thursday and Friday are early dismissal at 12:58, and Monday, November 11 is Veteran's Day (no school) |
Room 19Announcements, achievements, information, and pictures will be posted here throughout the year. Archives
February 2018
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