9/22/2017 Room 303 News

Weekly Updates and Reminders: 

• Daily folders and red reading folders are to go to and from school each day.  Reading logs are to be filled out at home to log their 20 minutes of nightly reading.
• Assignment Notebooks (planners) are to be signed or initialed every evening by a parent.  Thank you for taking the time to check your child's planner.
• Please always email BOTH teachers if you have any questions or concerns.  
• 3rd Grade is cooking up some homemade applesauce next Friday, September 29th.  Please send your child to school with an apple any day next week so we can enjoy a warm fall treat together!  We love making our classroom family a place for learning and memories!  
  

• Our Funky Fall Fund Walk is on Friday, October 6.  This is our school's only fundraiser- we hope that you will consider collecting pledges online or simply by paper.  
• Please also consider joining our Wixom PTA! Your membership doesn't require any commitment.  These funds help our school so much!
• There is a half-day of school on Wednesday, September 27.
• Happy September birthdays to Archita, Alana, and Ella!  :)
  

Math:

We have begun our weekly math fluency!  Information was sent home today explaining how your child can study at home each evening to prepare for their fact fluency quiz on Friday.  In addition, this week's instruction included telling time to the nearest minute, calculating elapsed time using an open number line, rounding numbers to the nearest 10, and representing & interpreting data on a scaled bar graph.  Thank you for helping your child establish a homework routine!  

Social Studies:

What a fun week we had looking at our huge classroom maps, as well as smaller desk sized maps and our globe.  Students referenced these materials as we continue to study the geography of Michigan.  It is important for students to understand exactly where Michigan is located on a larger scale - a world scale and oh what fun they had working with maps.  We identified the seven continents, five oceans, as well as the three countries that make up North America.  Essentially we zoomed into Wixom, Michigan all week long! 

 Science:

There are many aspects to our science learning that include a science notebook, science textbooks, videos, vocabulary and content anchor charts as well as group discussions.  We were successful in experiencing each of these components as well as completing our hands-on experiment and recording our careful observations.  Students shared their observations as well as their writing with their Science Teams.

Writing: 

We have been very busy in Writer's Workshop.  The students have been working on generating different topics to write about and then "writing up a storm!"  We have been focusing on how good writers write using a storyteller's voice.  The students have been working hard to write in a way that makes the reader feel like he/she is there with them!  

Reading: 

The students have been working so hard to build a great reading life!  We are now focusing our attention on how it's important for readers to "check for understanding" when they read.  The students were given a bookmark to use as a reminder to stop and think about what is going on in the text.  We also continue to work on looking closely at our reading logs to look for patterns and to make sure we are reading books that will help us to grow as readers.  We are reading aloud the story Stone Fox as we model these great comprehension strategies.