Week of September 18-22

Hello Families,

Hopefully you all have a beautiful weekend!

We made it through our first full week of school together! As a class, we created our very own rules:

1. Be safe
2. Treat others the way you want to be treated
3. Be responsible
4. Mistakes help us improve

We then worked in groups to design a poster for each rule to be hung in our classroom. Below are some pictures of the poster-making process!

Reminders/Updates

• Monday will be Day 4. Tuesday - Day 5, Wednesday - Day 6, Thursday - Day 1, Friday - NO SCHOOL. We have will have Art Monday. If you student does not have an art shirt yet, please send one! Mrs. Siegel mentioned that they will need them in these next weeks. 

• If you haven't yet, sign up for the Remind app. No downloading is necessary, just text "@feldkam" to 81010 to receive text messages about last minute reminders.
• Our first service project this school year is Postcards for Seniors. Starting in early October students will have the opportunity to decorate postcards that will be delivered monthly to Meals on Wheels participants in Kaukauna.  We are in need of some supplies for this project.  If you have any of the items listed below at home and would like to donate please send them to school and drop off in the Postcards box in the office.
• new boxes of markers
• light colored card stock
• fun stickers
• Questions can be directed to Kristin McEneany at kristin.mceneany@gmail.com
• We are excited to have the opportunity to have yoga with Mrs. McEneany again this year! We are planning to have yoga at the end of the day, from 2:30 to 3:00, on the second Friday of each month. Please send a towel with your child that can be used as a yoga mat throughout the year. 
• Field trip forms went home this week! Please send them back as soon as possible; if you need another copy, just let me know :)
•  This week is Safety Week, so we will be practicing fire drills, tornado drills, and an evacuation. 
• We are beginning our Land and Water Science unit next week. As Miss Kabara and I were opening the kits, we realized that we need some 2-liter empty (cleaned) bottles to use. If anybody is finishing up some bottles over the weekend or early next week, could you please donate them to our third grade class?
• Your child will have a substitute on Tuesday, September 19th. I will be here to get the class settled in the morning, but will head out for a training for the rest of the day. (But, I will be back that night for Family Night!)

Upcoming Events

September 19: Family Night- Hot Dogs and How to Help

September 20: Picture Day

September 22: Fox Cities Fun Run

September 22: No School
September 25: Dress Up - Badger Sports Wear
September 26 AND 27: MAP testing for 3rd grade
September 27: Dress Up - NDLC Wear
September 27: Homecoming Parade
September 28: Dress Up - Packer Wear
September 29: Dress Up - Kaukauna Colors

October 8: Ride to Read
October 10: Kaukauna fire department visits our classroom
October 12: Trout Museum field trip in the afternoon

Curriculum Update

Math: Last week we worked to develop an understanding of multiplication by using different strategies, such as count by's, equal groups, and arrays, to solve problems (see the chart we made!) This next week we will continue to work on multiplication and division with 5, 10, and 2. You can help your child think about these problems by asking "three groups of five is how many?" (3x5=?) or "15 is how many groups of 5?" (15/5=?). This helps children understand what multiplication and division mean! Students are also encouraged to draw pictures or use cubes to explain their thinking as they work through these problems.

Writing: Students have been writing lots of small moment stories in their writer's notebooks. This week, students will choose their best story and develop that in a draft booklet. We will take this story idea through the entire writing process!

Reading: This past week we learned ways to build our reading lives. We talked about how we can give book recommendations, set goals, and talk with our reading partners.This coming week we will start talking about how we need to comprehend what we read. We can do this by giving ourselves a comprehension check. We will also start doing some heavy predicting! :)

Ask your child about our new class read aloud! (Stone Fox) Students are LOVING it!

** Scholastic money forms are due this TUESDAY! :)

Word Study: This week we started our new program, Fundations. Students seem to love it! Next week we will work more with letters and sounds -- students will learn about digraphs (two letters that together make one sound, like "ch").

Content: We are finally starting our Land and Water Unit! Students will discuss what they already know and what they would like to know about land and water. We will look at pictures of national land forms and see how they have been affected from water. Students will also be working in groups to create their own land model and do some experiments with that!



As always, please let me know if you have any questions or comments!

Jenny Feldkamp