Happy St. Patrick’s Day!  We only have 2 weeks left until Spring Break!  As a reminder, spring break will be April 1 – 5.  If you know that your child will be missing any time before the break, please let me know so that I can plan ahead regarding any work that your child will miss. The Friday before spring break is the last day of the nine weeks which means that we might be doing some tests or quizzes that we might want to get in before your child leaves. Thank you so much for your help with this!

*Important Announcements*

 

*Spirit Day:  The SCA’s next spirit day is this Monday, March 18th. The theme will be “Green Day” in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day!

*Family Learning Night:  Henrico County will be hosting a Family Learning Night event at Henrico High School on Tuesday, March 19th, from 5:30-8:;30 pm.  Please see the attached flier for more information:    https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zrVFdMbXkRbICfYNTF-nbJv8oAGeuddn/view

*Assembly:  Our school will be going to see the 3rd grade’s DRUM assembly on Tuesday afternoon.  It’s going to be fun to watch!

*Recorder Reminders:  Please remember that students should be practicing their recorder at home throughout the week. Your child has the Recorder Karate music in his or her Music Folder and should be practicing the next song in order to earn the next belt. As Mrs. Garcia explained in the letter sent home with recorders, you can record a video of your child performing a song and email it to her so that your child doesn’t have to “test” in music class.  Doing this really helps cut down on the testing line in class, and your child can do it in a much more relaxed environment at home.  Thank you for your support with this!

*MAP Assessments:  As a reminder, students will take the Reading MAP test on Thursday, April 18th and the Math MAP test on Wednesday, April 24th.  The students have been working on their growth skills in class, using both the Reading and Math sections of “My MAP Learning Path” on Study Island.  Thank you for encouraging your child to work on this at home also, if possible.

Below is the link to the NWEA website and their Parent Toolkit:

https://www.nwea.org/parent-toolkit

*Classroom Prizes:  If you are able to, we could use some new Dollar Store prizes for our “Gotta Get It Card” drawings.  Thank you in advance if you are able to send in some items for our Friday drawings!

*What Are We Learning In Class?*

*Reading:

This week we will review the complex skill of making inferences. We will work with fictional text this week and focus specifically on poetry at the end of the week. Students will complete a comprehension assessment on Friday.  During small group rotations, students will meet with me in small groups to work on comprehension, vocabulary, and fluency strategies using leveled texts.  Students will also read to self and work on their writing.

We will continue with word study this week. Students will work on the word study sentences on Thursday. Please encourage your child to be working on the meaning of the word study words and how to use them correctly in context. The class will take their word study test on Friday 3/22.

 

*Math:

On Monday we will review what we learned last week on perimeter and area.  Then we will  begin our new unit on geometry.  The topics we will be learning in this unit include:

• points, line segments, lines, rays
• types of angles (acute, right, obtuse)
• types of lines (parallel, intersecting, perpendicular)
• polygons up to 10 sides and the number of sides, vertices, and angles
• classifying quadrilaterals (parallelogram, rhombus, rectangle, square, trapezoid)
• solid (3-d) figures and the number of edges, vertices, and shapes of faces

 

*Social Studies:

We will finish up our Civil War unit this week (VS.7b & c). We will learn about the roles of various groups of Virginians on Monday, and then we will review all of the information from this unit.  The students have really enjoyed learning about this era of Virginia history, and had many good, insightful questions about this difficult subject matter.  The class will take the Civil War VS.7b & c Test on Wednesday, 3/20.  

*Science:

This week we will continue with our Animals & Ecosystems unit (SOL 4.5).  Topics we will learn about will include:

• the organization of ecosystems and different niches that organisms have
• consumers, producers, and decomposers
• types of consumers (herbivores, omnivores, carnivores)
• food chains and food webs
• structural and behavioral adaptations

Last week, students made flashcards for the vocabulary in this unit.  We will take the Animals & Ecosystems vocabulary quiz on Friday, 3/22.   The class will take the Animals & Ecosystems Test on Wednesday 3/27.

 

Have a wonderful week!

-Mrs. Jacobsen