Weekly Preview- Triggerfish and Tiger Sharks
February 1st- 5th, 2016
This is what we hope to accomplish this week:
Reminders/Announcements
1. If you are on campus (even if it’s just to drop your child off, or pick them up at class) you need a yellow “visitor” tag from the office. Teachers received this reminder from administration last Wednesday during our staff meeting. This should be uniform across the school and we were asked to share the message. Please…and thank you!!!
2. We will be visiting Morgan-Wixson Theater in Santa Monica (I accidently put Dixon on the permission slip) next week to watch, “The Hundred Dresses.” We have six open spaces for chaperoning, if you are interested in joining us.
3. Frau Kasai is asking for each child to bring in a shoebox for an art project in the coming weeks. She will be making dioramas with the students that tie into our next UOI, Booming Biomes.
4. The 2nd semester is officially underway and we’d like to remind families to provide a water bottle or even a reusable cup for your child.
5. We will be working on our portfolios this week and there are still a few kids without a white 3-ring binder. If possible, please bring this to school by tomorrow. (Please ask your child if they are one of the one without a binder. They know!)
Language Arts
***English spelling and vocabulary is only for the Triggerfish this week! **
1. This week it’s Q-R words. Practicing these words throughout the week is the best way to ensure success! All the vocabulary words are on Quizlet for them to practice.
2. Handwriting will also be practiced this week.
3. For our language focus this week, both classes will be learning about homophones and homonyms.
4. Students are also working on book reports in class. They will be creating a “mini-book” review of the book(s) they are reading.
5. Our next writing strand, Opinion Writing, starts this week as well.
German Language Arts:
1. Now that we are at the beginning of the second term of 3rd grade I want to, first of all, acknowledge the effort that many children have put into improving their German in the last few months. As a result, I have seen tremendous growth in a lot of the students.
2. Secondly, I wanted to thank you for supporting vocabulary study at home. In the last two weeks, a large majority of students scored 90% or more in their tests. This is a testament to how much effort students put into their work. Keep it up, kids!!! Vocabulary study is the single most important thing students can do at home to advance their language skills and to ensure their ability to comprehend the content of our UOIs, and to participate in the classroom.Please make every effort to continue to support your child in studying his/her vocabulary words at home.
3. Vocabulary words for Tigersharks only this week. As always, we will have a quiz on Friday.
4. Quizlet- I am currently reorganizing and renaming existing study sets and adding new basic sets. Please have your students review / practice the study sets that are on the site so that they will maintain vocabulary they have learned.
5. Triggerfish are in German Language Groups this week.
6. This week we are reading a book named "KasimirlässtFrippemachen". Children are then writing summaries of the book with guidance and on differentiated levels.
Math
1. Unit 7 starts and wraps up this week, with a topic test planned for Friday. Unit 7 focuses on division.
2. Please practice multiplication at home on daily basis! Immediate recall of the facts is the goal with this and the only way this is possible is with daily practice. This is so beyond important for your child’s math future and unfortunately, we are not seeing the majority of our kids with this skill yet.
U.O.I.
Portfolio work will take up our UOI time this week, but we are excited about our next unit of inquiry, Booming Biomes! More details in the coming weeks!
Thanks for all your support,
Seth and Kirsten