We sure are living in some interesting times. I am doing my best to keep our classroom environment a place where students feel safe, want to learn, and like to have fun. I am impressed with how resilient these students are with all of the changes that have taken place and all of the events they’ve had taken from them this school year. Overall, I feel like students are still excited to be at school.
This week students were given an opportunity to read their persuasive essays to the class. I was impressed at the writing and their creativity to convince their audience to make a change. I will send these essays home soon for your child to read aloud to you! In the meantime, here are pictures of the students reading. Students were given the option to read and some of them did not feel comfortable. If you do not see your child, they chose not to read in front of the class.
Conferences
I am looking forward to talking to you and actually meeting many of you for the first time on our Zoom conference call this week. I have 13 conferences on Monday night and only one break so if I am running a couple of minutes behind, don’t panic. I will be there soon. If there is something we need to talk about further, we can schedule another time.
Book Fair
We will go look at books on Monday for the book fair. Your child will come home with their wish list and prices of books they are interested in buying. If you would like to purchase books, please send the money by Wednesday.
Academics
Math: With having Nov. 23-24 off, we need to get our math test in by Friday, which means we will be doubling up on some math lessons this week. We will move very quickly through these lessons so the homework packet will be a little thicker this week. I will be including work that will help review for the test. Normally I like to send the review sheet home two days before the test but I will not be able to for this one. So please set aside some time on Thursday evening to go over the review sheet.
Reading: We are continuing to read mysteries with partners. Students have learned that there is always a crime solver and a partner crime solver. They work together as crime solvers themselves to look for suspects and clues given in the book.
Writing: We will work on grammar, spelling, and extra math during our writing block this week.
Polar Express Party
It has become a 3rd grade tradition to hold a Polar Express party for our Christmas party each year. We will still have a Polar Express Party but it will look a little different this year. We will hold it in our classrooms and play games, make crafts, and of course, drink hot chocolate. We haven’t done a gift exchange in years, but thought this year would be fun to add this to our party. We would like each student to bring in 19 small items to give to their friends. These can be Dollar Store finds like pencils, stickers, play dough, candy, etc. More information will be coming home in December, but I wanted to make you aware in case you were one that liked to watch for sales and plan ahead.
Stay warm today!
