Book Orders Home!

Yesterday your students were sent home with book orders! This month there are so many great incentives to buy books for your student! Books are an important part of helping your child become a better reader so your support for book orders are helping that cause! In addition, your purchase is allowing our classroom to get new books and materials that will help them become better readers, writers, and Third Grade students overall! For every book you purchase, your student will get 20 class dollars to spend at our class store as well. Everyone is winning with this! Book orders are due in class or online by January 20th and there is a lot of great book picks this month. Check it out!

Today we spent some time preparing for our state testing which is quickly approaching (it will happen at the beginning of March for us!). Today we talked about test strategies for multiple-choice questions. Our strategy was to look for answers that are obviously wrong and cross it off so we aren't tempted to guess that choice. Every day this week we are going to be talking about a different test-taking strategy and practicing with different formats so the state test is not at all a surprise and we are used to it when we get there!

We also set up a science experiment today where we are seeing what happens to a balance with wet paper towels in them. One of the cups with the paper towel is open and the other is covered with a lid. We made some great predictions and I can't wait to see what happens tomorrow.

This afternoon we also got to finally play with the reading games that we had donated to our classroom. The students had a TON of fun with the three games so far! We had Contraction Go Fish, Plural Grab Bag, and Rockin' and Rollin' Syllable Yahtzee. It is always nice to get a new set of games to play with, especially ones that help us learn and practice skills we know! That always makes me happy when there are learning games!

We are really excited to announce that we have had a laptop and several different kinds of science materials donated to our classroom through the same website! The website is www.donorschoose.org and is a fantastic way to have people from around the country be able to help support teachers and schools like us! We are super excited to have the new materials and can't wait for the rest of them to arrive! Thank you so much for the generous donations of our supporters!

There are a few students who are in serious danger with their grades in reading. The expectation in my class for this quarter is to have read and conferenced with me on 300 pages this quarter. Though there are other parts to the reading grade, that is a big majority of the grade for the students. Of the 12 students in the class, 9 have met and far exceeded that expectation. Our highest reading student has read over 1500 pages, this quarter alone! There are three students, however, who have not met these goals and their grade is in serious jeopardy. Please ask your student if they have met the goal or email me to find out. The bar is going to be continually raised as the year goes on to prepare them for fourth grade and their bright future. Next quarter students will be required to read at least 400 pages AND take quizzes on all of the books they read. I know they are ready for this but it will take extra effort on their part. Support your student in their reading success and help remind them to read every night for at least 20 minutes. This reading is so important for their futures!

I hope you all have a great evening and I will see you tomorrow!