Short Week! October 23-25

Hello Families,

I'm enjoying more and more each day that I get to spend with your children! They really are a great bunch of students. This coming week is short--only three days! Even though it's a short week, my blog doesn't seem to be any shorter...

Reminders/Updates

• Monday will be Day 4. Tuesday - Day 5, Wednesday - Day 6.
• Join your child's Seesaw account if you haven't already! You will get to see things that they have been working on in the classroom.
• There have been some issues with students being able to get onto Seesaw at home. If that is true for you, let me know and I'll do my best to figure it out!
• Next week is Red Ribbon Week, a time dedicated to celebrating a healthy and drug-free lifestyle. We will participate in dress up days to raise awareness:
• Monday-"Teaming up against drugs is NO SWEAT!" (Active wear)
• Tuesday-"My future is bright drug-free" (Bright/Neon clothing)
• Wednesday-"Be united against drugs" (Wear red)
• I will be absent for a few days these upcoming weeks for training. Please remind your child to be the respectful, responsible students that they are for the substitute teacher on those days!
• Before I had mentioned that the Unit 1 Math Test will be next week. I decided that we will instead have it November 2nd and 3rd. There are a few more things that I would like students to practice more so they can be successful on the test. Spending more time on the first unit and developing that strong foundation of knowledge with multiplication and division will be helpful for Unit 2 and the rest of the year! Let me know if you have any questions. 
• The first date for Kindred Hearts visit is Nov. 11 from 9-10 am.  Families will meet at Kindred Hearts and read stories and their writing/books to residents.  Families will need to bring books/writing with them.  

Click here to sign up to attend the first visit. Please contact Kristin McEneany kristin.mceneany@gmail.com if you have any questions. Thank you! 

•  Typing Club - Some students were wondering if they could practice typing at home. Of course! They can go to feldkamp.typingclub.com and enter in their username and password. Their username does NOT include the @kaukaunasd.org. Remind them that they can only move on to the next level if they get 5 stars!

Upcoming Events

October 23: Wear Sweats and/or Team Apparel
October 24: Wear Neon/Bright Colors
October 25: Red Day! Be United Against Drugs
October 26 AND 27: NO SCHOOL
October 30: PJ Wear Day
October 30: Miss Feldkamp will be gone
October 31: Wear Orange and Black
November 1: Miss Feldkamp will be gone
November 2: Unit 1 Math Test
November 3: Unit 1 Math Test
November 7 Miss Feldkamp will be gone
November 8: Miss Feldkamp will be gone

Curriculum Update

Math: Students should be proud of all they have learned in Unit 1 with multiplication and division! We have been working on solving story problems and determining the type of problem that it represents. It is tricky to determine if a story problem represents multiplication or division because we can use multiplication equations to check our answers! Most students do not have this mastered yet; don't fret too much, though, because we will be working on this for a couple months yet! We went over some of the review on Friday and will finish up on Monday. We will also be working on writing the correct equation to go with story problems and diving deeper into the distributive property with multiplication. 
**Students should work on the Review at home and bring it back Monday. The review is VERY similar to the test. If your child is struggling on the problems not yet solved, make a note of it so I know. Encourage your child to instead explain a problem to you that we have already went over on the review or try another one like it. 

Writing: This week was exciting for Writing! Students had two days to free write--anything they wanted--while each student and I assessed their Opinion On Demand together. We then moved into Opinion Writing, delivering a persuasive speech to Mrs. Frischmann about how construction workers should not be working on our school during the school day. We discussed how problems are not a cause for whining, but rather a cause for writing :) Next week, we will think of ideas for opinion writing and draft many pieces. 

Word Study: We learned about "glued" sounds (ham, pan, pink, song) and r-controlled vowels (car, horn) this week. Since the Word Study packet was sent home at the end of this week, return the "Week 2" packet on Wednesday! If you are ever working on something in the packet at home and your child does not understand yet, that is ok. We probably did not get to that topic in school yet, so you can just wait a few days and try again when they are ready. Also, I'm open to feedback on how the Word Study packets have been going at home. We talked a lot as a school about what homework in Word Study would look like, so I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Reading: This past week has been SO exciting! Students have become real live detectives! On Tuesday we started off with solving a mystery and students even had to find clues to find the mystery flavored oreos. We learned that in mysteries we need to pay attention to ANY clue and we learned that ANYBODY is a suspect...at first! The next week and a half we will learn new strategies when reading mysteries. We will also be reading VERY closely so we can try to solve the mystery before the detective in the book. We will even start digging a little deeper in mysteries and think of patterns and characteristics of mysteries. The goal is that students are reading A LOT! Many students already finished a book or two within 3 days! This work should keep on going. You'll notice that your child is reading the SAME book as their partner. Their partners and them have set goals on what to read each night for homework. This has helped their book stamina increase! :)

Content: We have been researching to become quite the expert dam engineers! We built our dams on Friday and will add finishing touches next week. We'll then see if our dams will in fact save the people's homes or if they will be flooded from the water! As our land and water unit comes to a close, we will also reflect on all that we have learned in science so far.



Know that you can always contact me with any questions or concerns. Have a wonderful weekend!

Best,
Jenny