April 9 - 13

Hello Families,

Hopefully everyone had a relaxing and refreshing spring break! I was able to spend some extra time with my family and get a few more things crossed off my wedding planning checklist!

Here are a few pictures from last week:

Our class's Egg-Crack Off

  

Spring Celebration with our First Grade Buddies

Reminders/Updates

• Turn in permission forms and money for our school field trip to the PAC if you haven't yet!
• We took our first Wisconsin Forward test! If you want to practice with the online tools some more at home, you can click this link and click on Item Samplers Sign In or Online Tools Training - Grade 3 -  ELA or Math. 
• We are taking these tests right away in the morning, so it is important for students to get a good night's rest the night before!
• Students will need to type their answers for the ELA portions. If your child would like to practice their typing at home, here is the link to Typing Club. They just need to enter their username (which does NOT include the @kaukaunasd.org) and password. Remind them that they can only move on to the next level if they get 5 stars! 
• Fang Reading Program: "Third Base" was due Friday, April 6. The last one is due April 20th. 
• Our Knowledge-A-Thon (KAT) is next week!!! 
• If you are  interested in volunteering, please sign up by clicking the link: 2018 Knowledge-A-Thon (KAT) Day

• The week of the KAT, we have some fun dress up days!
• Monday, April 9th: K - "Kozy" day - wear comfy clothes or PJs
• Tuesday, April 10th (No school)
• Wednesday, April 11th: A - "Answer" Dress up like an answer to a KAT question
• Thursday, April 12th: T - "Teacher" Dress up like a teacher
• Friday, April 13th: KAT! Dress like our grade's assigned Olympic color (each grade will come in one of the colors of the Olympic rings) 3rd Grade wears GREEN
• The school dance will be Friday, April 13, from 6:00-8:00 in the school gym. 
• If you're interested in volunteering for the dance, the signup is here: http://signup.com/go/SVDqrWT
• Running Club will start this week Thursday, April 12th! 
• If you haven't yet, please return your child's portfolio from conferences!

Upcoming Events

April 9: "Kozy" day  
April 10: NO SCHOOL
April 11: Dress like an answer to a KAT question
April 11: Forward Test - ELA 2 & 3 at 8:15
April 12: Dress like a teacher
April 12: Forward Test - ELA 4 at 8:15
April 13: KAT
April 13: 3rd Grade--Wear Green!
April 13: KAT Celebration Dance at 6:00PM

April 18: School trip to the PAC
April 19: Forward Test - Math 1 at 8:15
April 19: Family Night at 5:30PM - Community Projects
April 20: Forward Test - Math 2 at 8:15
April 20: Earth Day - Wear green and blue

April 26: Movie Star Day Wear

Curriculum Update

Math: This week we finished up Unit 5 and reviewed area, perimeter, and equivalent fractions by playing Jeopardy! Students started the Unit 5 test Friday, and we'll use Monday to finish up the test as well. Any students that finished the test Friday will work to fix up their mistakes on Monday. Our next unit will have a geometry focus--triangles, parallelograms, rectangles, squares, and rhombuses. We'll be talking about angles and deciding if they are a right angle (90 degrees) or greater than or less than a right angle. Challenge your child to find some right angles in your home! (windows, doors, ceiling tiles, picture frames, etc.)

Writing: We have been working on writing our best extended responses this week, which is what students needed to do on their first Forward exam. Even though an "extended response" sounds intimidating, we realized that it is just like writing a literary essay...and we're pros at that! We even demonstrated our expert knowledge and all that we have learned on Seesaw; check it out to see just how much your child knows as a writer. Our next unit that we will be jumping into goes with our current reading unit--we'll be writing about our reading research.

Word Study:  We started Unit 9 this week, practicing words with the r-controlled sounds ER, IR, and UR. They make the same sound, so we've been working on figuring out which r-controlled sound looks right in the word. This unit will take us three weeks with our shortened and crazy week coming up, so the word study packet will be due Friday, April 20th. If your child needs more time to finish it, that is absolutely fine. I would rather students be doing the work and thinking about the rules they learned rather than them rushing through it to get it in by the due date.

Reading: Reading at home is so important for students to continue to grow as readers. If you would like to know 10 benefits of reading click here! At school, we aim to read for at least 45 minutes a day. In the beginning of the school year, students started at only about 25-30 minutes. They have done such a great job building up their reading stamina. This past week we began our new research unit! Students are studying all about a certain animal. We began learning how to research by studying certain subtopics across many books. I am SO impressed with the teamwork and research these kiddos have been doing! This next week we will continue to research our animal! We will also learn to use the fancy vocabulary we are learning about our animals. Ask your child what they are learning about their animal!

Content: This week groups were able to dive deeper into stories from a certain country (India, Brazil, China, or Mexico.) We have been trying to notice any common themes from each country, jotting notes about any wonderings we have, and then answering those questions through research. Next week, we will read another Cinderella story from a different country to compare and contrast it with the Cinderella story that we know. We'll wrap up this unit by creating a poster on all that we learned about the country we read stories from.

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

Best,

Jenny