Ms. Willis' 3rd Grade

A huge thanks to Mrs. Jayakumar, this week’s Mystery Reader! She is a nurse who works with Veterans and came prepared with information on Veteran’s Day to share and then invited students make cards for our Veterans!

Wow, it’s hard to believe the first quarter ends on Monday! Your children have worked very hard and you should all be proud of how they are developing this year. Homework will be posted shortly on our blog for the upcoming week (I’m currently having issues with the website). I am overall extremely pleased with how everyone did on our Graphing and Weather tests, it was evident that students had studied to prepare! We will begin new units in Math (Place Value) and Science (Habitats) starting Monday, so look for these notebooks to come home for review of new notes (and a quiz possibly at the end of the week). Our reading focus has been on finding the main idea in texts; please help further your child’s understanding of this by asking them about the main idea in their nightly reading. (In non-fiction, headings and titles are a BIG clue!) We are also working on our plural noun rules, which can be quite tricky. Extra support at home is a huge help as there will likely be a quiz coming on this once we wrap up irregular plural rules this week. All the notes are in your child’s Writing Journal if needed. I hope that you are enjoying this beautiful fall afternoon!

This week:

–Monday– Parent Conferences- please don’t forget your scheduled time, we have a pretty tight schedule that doesn’t allow much wiggle room!

–Tuesday– Election Day- NO SCHOOL FOR STUDENTS- Please go out and VOTE!

–Friday– Veteran’s Day Assembly- 10am in the gym, parents are invited to join us!

In the near future:

-CoGAT testing- Nov 14-16; given to all students for gifted screening. There is nothing you need to do to prepare your child aside from a good night’s rest and a complete breakfast!

-Nov 17- Field Trip to VA Living Museum- more details forthcoming next week

-Nov 18- Dad’s Night at Bowl America, 5-8pm (fundraiser)

-Nov 22- Report Cards go home

-Nov 23-25 Thanksgiving Holiday, enjoy the extra time with your children!

WOW- what an exciting time we had! A huge thanks going out to parents who volunteered their time and supplies, and especially to Mrs. Johnson for putting the whole party together!. The kids couldn’t stop talking about all the fun they had! 🙂 We are so lucky to have a great group of parents helping to make this a fun year!

More pictures will be added as I receive them, for now please enjoy a few I was able to snap on Friday!

This week we will be wrapping up our math unit on Graphing with a test on Thursday, November 3. We will also be finishing up Weather with a test on Friday, November 4th. Please help your child review at home for these important assessments!

We had an exciting week::

Exploring main idea

Gathering data and creating graphs:

Experimenting with the elements of a thunderstorm:

And with our special Mystery Reader, Mrs. Roethel!

Here are the times/dates for the Book Fair. Please stop by and check it out, and if you’re inclined you can peek at our Teacher Wishlist books as well!

Monday, October 24 3:00-6:00pm

Tuesday, October 25 During school hours-5:00pm

Wednesday, October 26 3:00-6:00pm

Thursday, October 27 During school hours-5:00pm

Friday, October 28 3:00-7:00 pm (During Monster Mash!)

They will accept cash, checks, credit and debit cards. Please remind students that the price on the book is not the price they will pay, they’ll need to bring in extra money to cover taxes. As always, thank you for your support during this insanely fun time in the library!

Thank you so much for supporting your child in completing homework- it’s been looking great! This week’s homework has been posted under our tab. We had an exciting week exploring weather by building anemometers and starting to collect our weather data: (My apologies for the few pictures, we’ve been getting so caught up in working I forget to pull out my phone!)

A shout out to Ms. Montague, who came in to read for us last week (which just so happened to be Jaden’s birthday!) and made a very generous donation of wishlist items to our classroom! Thank you so much for your generosity and for using Jaden’s special day to enrich our classroom!

This week, we will continue our unit on Weather by exploring storms. Following our Math test on Tuesday, we are jumping into Graphing. In reading, we are moving into Main Idea and starting on Nouns for our grammar skills.

Parents – interims are no longer coming home.  Please go to Parent portal at https://sis.henrico.k12.va.us/public/home.html

I am available if you have any questions, and more information will be coming soon about conferences!

Hi parents,

Please see the homework tab for this week’s choice board; if you have previously contacted me requesting a paper copy look for it to come home with your child on Monday. Fall conferences are coming up soon, please be on the lookout for more information.

Scholastic orders were submitted last Wednesday, as soon as they come in I will distribute books to students who ordered. Thanks for supporting our classroom, I can’t wait to share the new books we were able to purchase thanks to your orders! October flyers will be coming home soon.

Thank you for your patience as we work out the kinks with IXL and Raz-Kids logins. Raz-Kids levels have been adjusted to meet their instructional reading levels per PALS assessments. I am working to finish up F&P over the next couple of weeks and may make additional changes based on those results. IXL is an AWESOME website for math practice, please encourage your child to CHALLENGE themselves at home! (Since it is self-guided, I’ve seen some students exploring pre-K skills, and I know they are capable of more challenging work!)

Below are some important upcoming dates:

• Wed, Oct 5– Picture Day! Order forms came home Friday, please send your orders and money in with your child on Wednesday if you would like to order.
• Wed, Oct 5– Gifted Identification Meeting- a flyer with additional information came home on Friday.
• Fri, Oct 7– Geography Test
• Mon Oct 10 – is a student holiday, I will see your child on Tuesday!

http://schools.henrico.k12.va.us/colonialtrail/2016/09/22/carpool-karaoke/

Two weeks down! Please see the below important information.

• I have added a HOMEWORK tab to my website to post our weekly pages. Please go here or click on the tab above to print for your child.
• Please keep an eye out for subject notebooks that will come home throughout the week.  Look through any new notes as part of your homework routine and be sure the notebooks get packed up for school the next day.  In second grade, we announce test dates in advance but don’t usually announce quiz dates.  Notebooks coming home are an indication that there might be a quiz coming up soon!
• PALS testing will begin Monday; these are given in class and help me determine your child’s reading level. I am very excited to start our reading groups and dig into some great books!
• Order sheets are in your child’s green folder for this year’s class t-shirts! The second grade has designed these shirts to wear on special occasions such as field trips. We will have our own class color to show our class spirit! The cost is $9; please return your order form and exact change or check as soon as possible!
• Flyers went home today for our Scholastic Book Club! Please take a few minutes to review with your child and select any you’d like to purchase. You can also click here for the link. (Our class activation code is P6KRV and the due date is 9/28)
• Word Study is coming! A letter will be going home on Monday with additional information.
• Next weeks’ focus:
  • Language Arts- Making Connections (Text-Self), Complete/Incomplete Sentences
  • Math- Math Facts, Missing Addends
  • Social Studies- Community (QUIZ Tuesday) and Geography
• Wednesday, September 21, 2016 is a HALF DAY (11:35 dismissal) and Back to School Night- Please join us in the evening for a peek into what we are doing in class! 
• If you haven’t already, PLEASE consider joining our school PTA and/or making a direct donation! They are responsible for supporting so much that goes on here at CTES, and is only successful with your help! Please click here to go to the PTA page where you can join and review the fun calendar of events they have planned.

Other Important Dates:

• 9/23- Class t-shirt $ due
• 9/27- Spirit Events at Duck Donuts (6a-7p) AND Spirit Art (6:30-9p)

Whew, that’s it for now! Please see a couple of fun photos from our Friday!