Hi Families!
Quick notes to know:
- 9/11 NWEA testing for 3rd and 4th
- 9/9-9/13/19 Attendance Week
- Monday 9/9- Sport Day- wear an item representing your favorite sport team
- Tuesday 9/10- Hat Day
- Wednesday-9/11- Wacky Hair Day
- Thursday-9/12-PJ Day
- Friday-9/13- Costume Day
- 9/9/19 Hearing and Vision screening
- 9/10 Curriculum Night 6:00-7:00 p.m. (for parents)
- 9/12/19 Lockdown Drill
- 9/18 Early Release
- 9/20 8:15 a.m. Natural Leaders Assembly
- 9/20 – Possible Field trip in the works * Details to come SOON
- 9/21 Scholastic Book orders due (Flyers coming home Monday) online code P83VZ
- 9/25 Farm2Table
- 9/27 Fire Drill
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- Attendance/spirit week is coming! All of Lake County schools will be recording attendance and competing. We are hoping PCCS will be in the top ten! Help us out with the competition by making sure your child is at school each and every day, unless ill. There will also be prizes awarded in our school for top ranking attendance classrooms!
- We hope you will join us for curriculum night! If you are in need of childcare, the 8th graders are offering services to raise funds for their trip. Click here
- We love having our parents help! Volunteer forms are required each school year. Please do not forget to fill out this volunteer form in order to help us at the school or in the classroom. Thank you so much!
NEXT WEEK:
Reading and Writing,
We have created comprehension necklaces and started to use the strategies on our necklaces (which are named after animals). We will continue to review the strategies learned and learn more strategies.
This week, students will compare and contrast the central themes in the three stories we have been focusing on; “A Bad Case of the Stripes,” “Mark Miller,” and “Thank You, Mr. Falker.” Students will also continue to practice making connections “spinner spider” from a text to self, to another text and to the world. We will also continue to practice “fix up bear” as we learn even the best readers sometimes will need to stop and reread text to improve comprehension. Over the next two weeks, we will learn about “Questioning Owl” and how good readers ask themselves questions about the story they are reading. We will also work on “Inferring Iguana” and discover how to “read between the lines” and use clues the author gives us about plot and character development.
After we wrap up “Thank you Mr. Falker,” we will start the chapter book, “The Hundred Dresses” by Eleanor Estes. We will continue reading this book for the next few weeks, as we utilize different comprehension strategies to understand the story deeply.
This story had a theme of acceptance and treating each other with kindness, which students will be exploring. We will also use our comprehension strategies to become better readers by deeply understanding the text.
This week, we will continue to roll out the expectations for our last 2 Daily 5 topics; Listening Center, and Read to Someone. Students will work on learning the expectations and practice these skills for these centers. My hope is by next week, all 5 parts of the Daily 5 will be open for use. Once this happens, there will be weekly assignments in each part of Daily 5 for students to work on.
In the next two weeks, students will have a listening center story about economic concepts, work on cursive writing, and use typing.com. We will also write a letter to a person who has helped us, in the style of “Thank You Mr. Falker.”
We had a wonderful first week of spelling, despite needing to start on a Tuesday!
This week the students started their individual spelling groups. These groups were decided by using a filtering test and students were grouped by which spelling patterns they needed to work on. Just a reminder the spelling schedule is as follows:
Monday
– Your child will sort their words into categories like the ones we did in school. Your child should read each word aloud during this activity. Ask your child to explain to you why the words are sorted in a particular way; what does the sort reveal about spelling in general? Ask the student to sort them again as fast as possible. You may want to time them.
Tuesday
– Do a “Write Sort”
– Your child should lay down the header (bolded) words or letters to help distinguish each rule.
– Child reads the word out loud and puts into the correct category.
-Adult will check to see if the word is in the correct category.
– Child will write down the sort in the word work journal.
Wednesday
– Do a “Blind Sort” with your child.
-Lay down the header (bolded) words to help distinguish each rule.
-Adult will read the word aloud and the child will point to the category it belongs to. Adult will put down the word after the child has pointed to the correct category and the child will move the word under the appropriate heading.
-If your child makes an error without seeing the word, show the word and have them sort it, but then try the blind sort again with words that they miss with their initial try.
Thursday
-Do a “ blind write sort”.
-Use the list of spelling words from Monday.
-As you call out the words in a random order, students should write them in categories, identifying the similarities between the words.
-Call out any words your child misspells a second or even a third time.
Friday
-Test Day (complete a speed sort the morning of, if there is time)
Please keep in mind, I may ask specific students to rewrite the lists more frequently if I believe a student needs additional practice. This will be communicated with you via the agenda planner.
3rd grade Math,
We will be finishing Unit 1 in the next two weeks. At this time, the unit assessment is scheduled for September 20th. Unit 1, focuses on addition and subtraction, starting with a review of second grade concepts and moving into harder addition and subtraction problems. Uit 1 also focuses on many different strategies for solving addition and subtraction problems. We have finished our review part of the unit and are moving into harder addition and subtraction for the final 2 weeks of the unit. Students should continue to use the same strategies, and apply these strategies to solve more complicated problems. In the next two weeks, the focus will be on 2 or 3 digit addition and 2 or 3 digit subtraction. Students will also work on solving word problems using addition and subtraction. Please make sure your student is completing any homework assignments, as this will help them be prepared for class the next day. Students should be writing their math homework assignments in their agendas daily.
On nights that homework is not assigned students are encouraged/sometimes assigned to spend 15 minutes on ixl.com to work on concepts they need help with or that mirror what we are learning in class. Most students really enjoy working on ixl.com and it helps to reinforce math skills.
We have also started the September Number Corner. Students are having fun identifying the patterns that are developing in our daily calendar equations. Arrays, Loops & Groups, Ratio Tables and Pictures have all been revealed on the calendar to represent multiplication equations and concepts. We have also been surveying the class and creating bar graphs to represent the data.
4th grade math,
Please see Mrs. Ottaviani’s website for 4th grade math information and updates.
Science/Social Studies,
We are in our social studies unit on economics. This unit will continue for the next several weeks. Students have been working hard on learning economic terms. We have created an economic vocabulary book. We have learned about consumers, producers, budgets, opportunity costs, resources, scarcity, import and export.
Next, we will be analyzing scenarios and applying economic concepts to the scenarios. We will read “One Hen: How One Small Loan Made a Big Difference,” written by Kate Smith Milway. Then we will complete activities regarding the story and the economic principles introduced in the story, such as budgeting, saving, profit and loans.
We will also read “Rock, Brock and the Savings Shock” by Sheila Bair. We will complete activities afterward, by analyzing the economic choices each boy made and the impact those choices made at the end of the story.
Ms. Naomi will be a guest teacher and teach students a lesson about “food miles.” She will show students how far items have to travel to reach our grocery stores and also teach about sustainable practices.
We have a field trip in the works to a local apple orchard to learn about local agriculture and the economic concepts involved in farming including crop failure. We are waiting for final approval and arrangements for bussing, but please be on the lookout for more details to come on this field trip. We apologize for the short notice!
We will continue phenology and solo spots, alternating each week. Please make sure your student is prepared to be outside on a regular basis.
I hope you have a wonderful week!
