Newsletter December 12 - 16

Wow! It's hard to believe that our year is half over. I have had such a great year so far. I have truly loved getting to know all of your children and we have had a wonderful time together. They have all worked hard this semester and I'm so proud of all they have accomplished. I cannot wait to see what the second half of the year will hold for us.

I have been blessed with so much this year and cannot tell you how grateful I am and how much I love working at BDS. It is an awesome place...I feel so lucky to be a part of it. I hope that you all have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

This week we begin our Christmas unit. The hallway looks fantastic; the kids are going to be in awe tomorrow morning. We will have our Christmas performance on Thursday evening at 6 PM. Please see the school newsletter for more details.

News to Know

• Lola is this week's snack helper. Summer will be snack helper when we return from break.
• Report cards will be sent home Monday. Please contact me if you have any questions.
• The conceptual posttests are often difficult and cover material from throughout the unit. I always encourage the students to try their best and I grade the tests on a curve. While it may look like the students are struggling with the questions, a comparison of their pretest and posttest answers will show that they are actually learning a lot about each topic and I am grading them accordingly. Students also receive conceptual grades for various projects and participation in activities. The conceptual posttest counts as only a small portion of the students' final grades for conceptual.
• Friday will be a half day and dismissal will be at 12 PM. Students are allowed to wear pajamas on this day.
• I am still looking at books for the January unit. I will be in touch soon with information about the book I've chosen.

Language Arts

This week I will be sharing one of my favorite childhood books with the students: The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson. It's a hilarious and heartwarming tale that I know the kids will love. We will also review grammar concepts with some fun, Christmas-themed lessons.

Math

We will wrap up Topic 8 and take a test on either Tuesday or Wednesday. It is important that students continue to study their multiplication facts over the break. Mastering their facts will make future topics much easier for them.

Conceptual

This week we will learn about other countries' holiday traditions as well as our own. It promises to be a fun week!

Science / Social Studies

We will finish up our timeline project.

Newsletter December 5 - 9

Hi parents! I hope that everyone is having a wonderful weekend! Thank you so much for all your help with Friday's tea party! The students learned a lot and tried some new things. This has been such a great unit. I have thoroughly enjoyed sharing my love for Shakespeare with the students. They have been so enthusiastic this unit.

News to Know

• Luke Weathersby is this week's snack helper. Lola will be next week's helper.
• Family tree projects are due on Tuesday. Please refer to the assignment sheet for instructions.
• Students will need a mirror for Wednesday's center activity.
• We will begin our Secret Santa project on Monday, December 12. Remember, presents are not to be expensive: candy or small toys are perfect.

Language Arts

We will finish reading The Shakespeare Stealer this week and take a test on Friday. We will continue discussing verbs and have a grammar test on Friday. We will also continue working on our object descriptions.

Math

We will finish the Topic 7 test on Monday (the students are almost finished). We will then begin Topic 8: Division. This topic focuses on using multiplication / division fact families to figure out answers to division problems. This is a short topic and we will try to wrap it up before Christmas break.

Conceptual

We will finish the Shakespeare unit this week. We will present our family trees on Tuesday. We will discuss the mystery over Shakespeare's identity, Queen Elizabeth, and the use of sound effects during performances. We will have the Hamlet performance on Thursday and A Midsummer Night's Dream on Friday.

Science

We will continue our experiments with weathering and erosion.

Christmas

Hi parents! As a class, we decided to do a Secret Santa project this year. This week, students will draw names. Then, on Christmas week (December 12 - 16) each student will bring a small gift each day for the student they chose. Gifts do not have to elaborate - it can be a candy bar, bag of chips, or small toy (i.e. yo-yos, bouncy balls, etc). It's a fun activity and the kids are excited about being sneaky! On the Friday before Christmas break, the secret Santas will be revealed.

If you have any questions about this activity, please let me know!

Also, don't forget that Friday students need a coffee mug / teacup with their name on it and 2 boxes of cookies for the tea party. Thank you!

Friday's Tea Party

Hi parents! This Friday, we will be having a British-style tea party at BDS. I am so excited as I love tea and cannot wait to share the tradition with the students. Here is what the third grade students need to bring:

Each student needs to bring a mug / teacup with his or her name on it. Tea is just not the same in a plastic cup!

Our class is bringing biscuits (cookies). I would like each student to bring a couple of boxes of British-style cookies (shortbread, digestives, ginger snaps, jam-filled). You can find these types of cookies at Corner Market, Walmart, and Target. Or, you are welcome to bake something if you like. Basically, they can bring any fancy cookie, just not chocolate chip, Oreo, etc. We want them to try new things!

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to get in touch! Friday is going to be so much fun!

Newsletter November 28 - December 2

Hi parents! I hope that everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We have only 2 weeks left of the Shakespeare unit, and we have something exciting things planned for the students. We are planning to have tea party on Friday; I will email and create a blog post either Sunday or Monday to let you know what our class is bringing.

I will also be sending home information about the family tree project. It will not be due until the last week of the unit.

News to Know

• Will Brett is this week's snack helper. Luke Weathersby is next week's helper.
• Students need to bring their shoe boxes by Tuesday, if they haven't already done so.

Language Arts

We will continue reading The Shakespeare Stealer. We will also begin our writing project for this unit, which will require students to describe an object they love. I will send home more details about this project on Monday or Tuesday. We will also continue discussing verbs, particularly subject-verb agreement. In centers, we will make rapiers and try to write as quickly as we can, as the protagonist of our story has to write quickly. We will also take a practice comprehension test together and discuss how to answer questions with details from the story.

Math

We will continue Topic 7 this week. This topic focuses on division as a concept, not division facts yet. We will be exploring division from several angles. It is a short topic and we will finish on Thursday. I will send home study guides on Thursday, we will review on Friday, and take a test on Monday. I do not normally give Monday tests, but I am hoping to get through Topic 8 before Christmas. That way the students will be finished with division and can start on something new when we come back from break.

Conceptual

On Monday, we will be making our quills and hornbooks. We will be using our shoeboxes on Tuesday to design our own playhouses. This week we will also learn about sonnets, Shakespeare's clever creation of words, and his use of figurative language.

Science / Social Studies

We will continue our topic of forces shape the land and experiment with weathering and erosion this week. We will also work on our class timeline.

Newsletter November 21 - 22

Hi parents! I hope that everyone has had a nice weekend. We started our Shakespeare unit last week and it's off to a great start. The hallway looks wonderful - thanks to the parents who helped put it together. The kids seem eager to learn about Shakespeare. We also had our first play performance this week; the kids were excellent and I cannot wait to see the rest.

We have a fun two days planned this week before we begin our holiday. We will be doing some fun Thanksgiving activities and crafts. We will be discussing the history of Thanksgiving and things for which we are thankful.

For this unit, students will be completing a family tree project at home. I will be sending home more information on the project, but kids may want to talk to some relatives this week while they are visiting. While the trees do not have to go back further than grandparents, I have encouraged the children to see how far back they can go.

Please remember to send a shoebox with your child after Thanksgiving. We will be doing a project.

I hope that you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I am thankful for all of my students!

Newsletter November 14 - 18

This week we begin our last full unit before the Christmas holidays. I cannot say much about the unit yet, but we have some great things planned for the students. This unit is one of my personal interests, and I cannot wait to share it with the kids.

Thank you to all of the parents who helped out during the Medieval unit. It was one of the best units we've had at BDS and I cannot thank everyone enough for being so wonderful. The teachers and parents all worked hard to make this unit so fun, and all of the kids had a great time and learned a lot.

News to Know

• The snack schedule has been updated. Please check it and make a note of your child's assigned week.
• This week's snack helper is Luke Antinnes. We do not have a helper for the week of Thanksgiving as we'll only be at school for Monday and Tuesday and should have enough leftovers.
• For our centers on Wednesday, students need to bring pictures of themselves when they were younger and current pictures. We will be using different verb tenses to describe ourselves. Please send pictures that you do not mind being glued to card stock.

Language Arts

We will begin reading our new book. Students will need to read chapter 5 for homework on Tuesday night. We will begin our descriptive writing project for the unit. We will also be discussing verb tenses and have a grammar quiz on action verbs and verb tense on Thursday.

Math

We will wrap up Topic 6 this week and take a quiz on Thursday. We will begin division on Friday. Students have now worked through all 12 time tables and should be studying them at home each night. It is important that students master their time tables for division and 2-digit multiplication.

Conceptual

We will take a pretest this week and get familiar with our topic of study. There are some exciting things planned for this week.

Science

We will continue discussing how forces shape the earth. This week we will be discussing and experimenting with weathering and erosion.