Good Afternoon,
January is almost done and we are hitting our stride again after the break! I just love coming to work each morning and seeing your kiddos faces smiling and so happy to be here! Thank you for sending them to school ready to learn each and every day! I wanted to share with you all (your student may have already) but over winter break I ran a campaign on a website called DonorsChoose.org. It’s a website that allows educators to create a GoFundMe type of page to purchase resources for the classroom. My campaign raised just over $1500 for me to purchase some flexible seating options for the classroom. We now have 12 seat discs, 2 yoga ball chairs, 8 wobble chairs, 2 student rocking chairs, and 15 new headphones! I do need to prepare a thank you for all of the donors, it’s required by the website, so I will be sending a few photos of students using the materials to the company for them to distribute to the donors. If you would prefer your child to not be included please send me an email to let me know by February 1st. My reminder list will be a bit longer tonight simply because I have not sent an email home in a few weeks. Thank you for your understanding! Academic information will be at the bottom! A couple of reminders:
Flood Hour: Flood math and reading time is focused on skills specific to your student. We alternate daily between the focus being on math or reading. Your student should be able to tell you the skill their group is working to master in order to improve their iReady test scores. Math: We are moving through unit 4 and will finish it on February 11th. Students took quick quiz #2 to assess their skills for 3 digit addition this past week. Those will come home next week. We will have quick quiz #3 on February 8th and unit assessment on the 10th. During this unit we are working on rounding to the nearest ten, hundred, and thousand. We are targeting addition and subtraction with 3 digits and finding different ways to solve the problem using grouping. Literacy: We are moving right along in literacy. We focus weekly on standards: this past week we focused on the standard of being able to find the main idea and key details to support in a non-fiction text. Your students are reading a lot of material during the week. As it comes home it would be great practice to keep it for rereading which increases fluency and comprehension. We started novel literature circles this week, we will meet every Friday to discuss their weekly reading assignment and job. Depending on your child’s group they are reading either Bud, Not Buddy, Frindle, Lemonade War, A Snow Day from the Black Lagoon, or have a book baggie of books. Writing: During writing on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we are working on an informative unit. We currently are practicing researching penguins and your students are loving it! They were so engaged and excited to do their very own research this week! This coming week we will turn their facts into a paragraph and then transition into researching a planet of their choice! Content: We started our science unit when we returned from winter break. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we are studying the solar system and all the parts and pieces that contribute. As you can imagine this unit is very engaging and students often have a lot to contribute from their own knowledge! As always please feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns. Email works best but if you need to chat by phone or schedule a conference please let me know! Have a terrific weekend! Jessica Van Thorre
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Good Evening,
I am not sure where time goes but it sure is flying by us! We had a terrific week and only have 2.5 weeks left before winter break. I love having your students in my class, I am very thankful to have the opportunity to work with them every single day! A couple of reminders:
Flood Hour: Flood math and reading time is focused on skills specific to your student. We alternate daily between the focus being on math or reading. As we move from last week and through this coming week I will be regrouping based on test results from iReady mid-of-year results. Math: We are moving through unit 3 and will finish it before winter break. Students took their first quick quiz this last week on measurement. We began time and are practicing reading clocks to the nearest minute and five minutes. We are also learning to use the vocabulary “quarter after” and “quarter to” please encourage your student to practice reading analog clocks and use those words to describe the time! Literacy: Our literacy block has been changed up a bit. This past week we focused on mastering our new rotation schedule and learning about poetry. As we move through the next two weeks we will continue mastering our rotation schedule along with expectations for each station. Reading groups will begin a novel/book study based on their level tomorrow. Be sure to ask your student about their book as we move through the week. Writing: Writing is now an everyday station during our literacy block. This past week students wrote about their Thanksgiving break. Most weeks students will have a specific writing assignment to complete for the week however, they will occasionally have free choice during the center. Content Literacy: We started our social studies unit this week. Our unit is Holidays Around the World. Your student has prepared their passport and suitcase for our travels, ask them about the stops we make as we travel around the world! We have already stopped in The Nederland’s. We learned about Sinterklaas and St. Nicholas Day which is December 6th. Following tradition students will be putting our their wooden shoe (actually paper) tomorrow night in hopes that Sinterklaas will travel all the way from The Nederland’s to fill them with treats. As always please feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns. Email works best but if you need to chat by phone or schedule a conference please let me know! Stay warm this week! Jessica Van Thorre Good Evening,
It is so hard to believe we are only 5 days away from Thanksgiving break and only have 8 more school days in November! Thank you for sending your students to school ready to learn each and every day! We had a tremendous week and accomplished a lot of learning! Looking ahead to this week we will be completing a progress monitoring in iReady for literacy, beginning a new unit in math, have a science assessment to wrap up measuring matter, and have a fun writing project with their disguised turkeys! A couple of reminders:
Flood Hour: Flood math time focused on mental math moving forward and backward by 10 and 1, finding ten when adding numbers, and identifying attributes of 2-D geometric features. Flood literacy focused on reading and understanding the purpose of Veteran’s Day. We continued to focus on the importance of closely reading a graphic containing information and answering questions based on the information contained in the graphic. This week’s graphic focused on the three branches of government. Math: We used several days this week to review and prepare for the unit 2 assessment. We took that assessment on Friday and will review any missed problems tomorrow during our math hour. We will be moving into Unit 3 this week, which focuses on measurement, time, and graphing. We will also begin working on mastery of multiplication and division facts now that we have completed that unit. Literacy: We worked through unit 2 week 3 in Wonders. The focus was on government and our essential question was ‘How do people make government work?’ We read stories about voting and the importance of voting. We focused on understanding the author’s purpose within these stories. When we think about author’s purpose we use PIE as an acronym. The ‘p’ is for persuade, ‘i’ is for inform, and the ‘e’ is for entertain. When reading at home ask your student which of these apply to their reading material. Writing: In writers workshop, we finished our personal narratives! They wrote wonderful stories about one memory from their past. This coming week we will do a quick writing piece about their disguised turkey! Content Literacy: We finished their lapbooks and our unit on measuring matter. We will be taking a final unit assessment on Tuesday, November 15th. After the break we will switch gears from science to social studies. We take a blast into the past and learn about important parts of history in the United States. As always please feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns. Email works best but if you need to chat by phone or schedule a conference please let me know! Enjoy the summer like week ahead! Someday we’ll have snow! Jessica Van Thorre Good Afternoon,
What a fun start to this past week with Halloween kicking us off! Thank you to all of you who came to watch the parade and assisted with the party in the afternoon. We only have 10 learning days before Thanksgiving break. We will be moving through curriculum and having several assessments over the next 10 days. Please do your best to be sure your student is here and ready to learn! Thank you for your partnership in helping your child do their very best at school! A couple of reminders:
Flood Hour: The flood hour is very intentional and driven by student needs. Groups of students can and will target different areas of need all within the hour. The skills I mention below will depend on your students’ grouping. If at any time you have a question about their grouping and/or specific skills they are working on please reach out. Flood math time focused on demonstrating understanding of place value within a number and identifying geometric shapes and attributes of each. Flood literacy focused on reading and understanding the history of Halloween. We also focused on the importance of closely reading a graphic containing information and answering questions based on the information contained in the graphic. The graphic this week was about the Mayflower which tied perfectly with our Wonders unit on immigration. Math: We had our second quick quiz for unit 2 this past week. Students are working hard to understand and demonstrate a variety of higher-level thinking skills in regards to multiplication. We worked on understanding order of operations and how to determine first steps in two-step words problems. We will have a couple of days of review this week before taking our unit 2 assessment. Literacy: We worked through unit 2 week 2 this past week in Wonders. The focus was on immigration and our essential question was ‘Why do people immigrate?’ We read historical fiction stories this week which are based on actual historical events but use a fictional story to tell about those events. We focused on finding the theme within these stories and worked through finding details within the story to support the theme. Writing: In writers workshop, we have been working on finishing up personal narratives. We spent this past week working on editing and revising our papers to be sure what we have written will make sense to the reader. We will wrap up our final drafts this week. Content Literacy: We are wrapping up our Measuring Matter unit this coming week. Your students are working through a lapbook which highlights the important areas of matter including identification of matter, measuring matter, properties of matter, and changes that occur to matter. We will be taking a final unit assessment on Tuesday, November 15th. As always please feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns. Email works best but if you need to chat by phone or schedule a conference please let me know! Have a terrific week! Good Evening,
Thank you, it was really wonderful to see each of you for parent teacher conferences. I appreciate you taking the time to come in and share more about your student and to hear how they are progressing at school. Together we make a team that will help your child be a successful student all year long! We had an excellent full week! We will be moving through our curriculum with purpose and intent over the next several weeks leading up to Thanksgiving break! A couple of reminders:
Flood Hour: Flood math time focused on manipulating 2 and 3 digit numbers using base ten blocks. Flood literacy focused on discussing our novels/books and wrapping those up. We will begin new groups on Monday both for flood math and flood literacy. Math: We continued on with Unit 2 which finishes up multiplication. We focused on multiplying and dividing with 6s, 7s, and 8s. We also briefly covered square numbers. We will have our first of two quick quizzes on Monday. Literacy: Week 6 in Wonders is always a review week. We took the opportunity this week to focus heavily on writing. Your students were rock stars! They wrote a friendly letter including a first draft, revising, editing, and final copy. On Thursday, we were able to start the process for writing a personal narrative. We will continue to move through the writing process this week during our writing block. In Wonders, we will begin Unit 2 Week 1 which focuses on cooperation! Content Literacy: We started our first science unit on Monday. The unit is Measuring Matter, which covers states of matter, measurement of matter, changes that occur with matter, and more! We will be moving through this unit for the next couple of weeks. One last thing, your students filled their cotton ball jar while I was on my trip. We took the time to vote on Friday using a ballot system on their next reward. The vote came in and a special snack of popcorn with a sweet treat mixed in was the winner! We will be having this snack on Friday afternoon! Photos of students casting their ballot and with the ballot box will be on my website this week! As always please feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns. Email works best but if you need to chat by phone or schedule a conference please let me know! Have a terrific week! Good Evening,
We had an excellent week! Your students are really settling into our day to day routines! I am really proud of them we had a couple of days with no one on orange or red, one day the whole class moved up to blue for being on task and working quietly during rotations, and the cotton ball jar is almost full again! I will be out this Wednesday, Thursday, and the following Monday. My husband’s grandma turns 100 next weekend so, we will be traveling back to his home state of Ohio to celebrate this unique birthday! My children are so excited to meet their great-grandma! A couple of reminders:
Flood Hour: During the flood hour students are receiving targeted instruction in both math and literacy. In math, this past week students worked on sequencing numbers with three digits, matching multiplication arrays with equations, and took a placement test on Moby Max. Moby Max is a program that targets areas specific to a single student based on their placement test. For example, a student may be working on counting from 1-100 and another student may be working on place value. In literacy, students began reading a novel, beginning chapter book, or storybook specific to their level. My goal with this first book is to encourage reading for enjoyment and to read a book from beginning to end. Depending on the group we will discuss chapters, students may write a chapter summary, or we might work on sequencing, all very specific to each reading level. We have also been working on comprehension with weekly passages and how to create a GSA. GSA stands for 'great short answer' and involves restating part of the question in our answer. This strategy helps students create complete sentences and well-rounded answers. Math: We finished unit 1 on Thursday with our final quick quiz. I was very impressed with their quiz results! We will have review on Monday for our unit 1 test which will be on Tuesday. We will begin unit 2 on Wednesday which will finish up multiplication. We will learn our 6s, 7s, 8s, and work heavily on solving word problems. Literacy: In Wonders, our stories were Mary Anderson's Great Invention (she invented windshield wipers) and All Aboard! Elijah McCoy's Steam Engine (he invented the oil cup). Our focus was on our strategy: ask and answer questions and our skill: cause and effect. We discussed metaphors, worked on the 'long a' sound and different ways to spell that sound within words, and learned 8 new vocabulary words related to our stories. Content Literacy: We continued our social studies unit on Community, Citizenship, and Responsibility. We focused this week on responsibility by discussing what it looks like when we are a good citizen. Students brainstormed different ways they show good citizenship with responsibility. They took those ideas and wrote two sentences each for home, school, and within the community. We will turn those sentences into a paragraph this coming week. As always please feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns. Email works best but if you need to chat by phone or schedule a conference please let me know! Enjoy our first week of cooler weather! Mrs. Van Thorre Good Evening,
We had a terrific week! Thank you for sharing your precious little ones with me! I absolutely love my job! I'm sure you noticed there were many papers that came home this weekend. Please be sure to look through them as there are several assessment results within the pile! Send the yellow Friday folder back tomorrow as well as the purple homework folder if you have it at home! A couple of reminders:
Math: We continued on with multiplication! We learned our 3s and 4s this past week! We have learned many strategies to solve multiplication equations! We will be finishing up with 1s and 0s this coming week and preparing for our final quick quiz. Our unit 1 test will be Tuesday, October 4th. I'm excited for all of your students to show how much they know! Literacy: In Wonders, our stories were Room to Grow and Gary the Dreamer with the focus being on our strategy and skill. We discussed sequencing, asking ourselves questions as we read, and compound words. Content Literacy: We continued our social studies unit on Community, Citizenship, and Responsibility. We focused this week on citizenship. We discussed different ways to demonstrate our citizenship within our communities! As always please feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns. Email works best but if you need to chat by phone or schedule a conference please let me know! Have a wonderful week! Good Afternoon,
It was so nice to have a full week with all academic pieces moving! Your kiddos did a wonderful job working hard, engaging in their learning, and bearing with me and my hoarse voice! Thank you for sending them with water bottles and snacks each day! We do have allergies in our classroom to peanuts, cashews, and pistachios. In order to keep these students safe snacks containing any of those three ingredients are NOT allowed in our classroom, thank you for your help in keeping all of my third graders safe! Your students wrote lovely thank you letters and drew pictures for our local police officers. It was National Thank a Police Officer Day on September 15th. Look for photos of your students holding their thank you on my website! Please read all the way down for important information! PICTURE DAY IS ON TUESDAY the 20th!! Math: We started the week off with graphing our first quick quiz results and making corrections to our quiz. We then moved into multiplication and division with 10s and 9s. We learned a new trick using our two hands to solve both multiplication and division with 9s. Give your student a few equations using 9s (ex. 9x4 or 81/9) and ask them to practice! We had our second quick quiz on Thursday. We looked at our results, graphed them, and made corrections on Friday. You will receive both quizzes this coming week in addition to the Math Benchmark A results for your student. If you have any questions about your student's progress please send me a message! Literacy: In Wonders, we read two stories The Dream Catcher and Yoon and the Jade Bracelet with the focus being on our strategy and skill. We discussed sequencing, visualization, and context clues. We continued our reading rotations this week and focused on work completion and expectations during this time. You will be receiving several tests home this coming week. The following tests will be included: Beginning of Year Comprehension Placement, Week 1 Comprehension, Week 1 Anthology Comprehension/Vocabulary test (Wolf), Week 2 Comprehension, and Week 2 Anthology Comprehension/Vocabulary (Yoon and the Jade Bracelet). Attached to each of these tests is a parent letter explaining the score based on the standards addressed. If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to reach out, I will explain more during parent/teacher conferences in October. Content Literacy: We began our social studies unit on Community, Citizenship, and Responsibility. We focused this week on community. We discussed different types of communities one might belong to as well as how to be an active person within a community. We will be moving into citizenship this coming week. A couple of reminders:
If you read this far THANK YOU! As always please feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns. Email works best but if you need to chat by phone or schedule a conference please let me know! Enjoy the rest of your weekend and GO BRONCOS!!! Good Evening,
Wow! Thank you so much for sharing your children with me! They are doing such a nice job of transitioning into school routines. They have received many compliments from various staff on how awesome they walk in the hallway! When they receive compliments from staff they earn a cotton ball in the class jar. When the jar is full (we are 3/4 of the way there) they will earn a reward. Academically we jumped into the curriculum this week with two feet! Please read all the way down for important information! Math: We dove straight into multiplication! We began with multiplying by 5s and had a lot of practice counting by 5s! We learned that multiplication can also be repeated addition. Ask your student to show you how that works. We learned how to make an array and create a multiplication equation related to the array. We moved into a brief introduction of division and ended the week today with introducing multiplication and division by 2s. We will have our first quick quiz next week to check on our progress. Literacy: We had our first spelling pre-test on Monday and final test today. Thank you for helping your student study their words all week! In Wonders (our reading curriculum), we read two stories Bruno's New Home and Wolf with the focus being on our strategy and skill. We discussed characters and visualization extensively. We began our reading rotations as well this week, which allows me to meet with all students in small groups every single day. We read the same leveled book Tuesday-Friday and tie in fluency, comprehension, vocabulary, skill, and strategy. Lastly, I began goal setting with students for their iReady testing. We discussed their score from last week and how we together will make growth throughout the year to end May strong! Content Literacy: This week we focused our content literacy on the beginning of opinion writing. Students will be expected to create an opinion writing piece in the next couple of weeks. In order for your students to be successful they need to fully understand the difference between fact and opinion. We practiced each day defining fact and opinion and identifying facts and opinions. Ask them to give you an opinion and fact about pizza! We wrapped up our afternoon today with students sharing their All About Me Bags. They each did a terrific job speaking in front of the class, sharing their prized possessions, and felt pride to share with their classmates and myself. Thank you for supporting them in this project. A couple of reminders:
If you read this far THANK YOU! As always please feel free to reach out if you have questions or concerns. Email works best but if you need to chat by phone or schedule a conference please let me know! Have a safe and enjoyable long weekend! Good Evening Third Grade Parents,
A quick update on our week... We had a wonderful week in third grade. We had many opportunities to learn the rules and get back into the groove of being in school! This week we had lessons about friendships and filling buckets! We read the book "Have You Filled a Bucket Today" by Carol McCloud. Your student wrote about how they can fill a friend's bucket, my bucket, and Winona's bucket. I encourage you to ask your student how they can fill your bucket. We tied those lessons into friendships and what we expect from our friends. We had many assessments this week and your student did a tremendous job powering through assessments that will help guide my instruction throughout the year. Our In Focus lessons this week focused on safety in the classroom and fears. We discussed both of these and decided we will all be each others "tigers"! A couple of reminders:
Have a terrific weekend! |
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February 2020
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