March 26

 

Dear Parents,

I hope your break was an enjoyable one.  It’s good to be back, winding down on another fabulous year.  It’s definitely the downward slide to third grade!  Won’t be long now!  The majority of this email is to give you basic information on all of our upcoming April events.  Please pencil these items on your calendar, and note more information in greater detail will come out soon.

R  Our field trip today was AMAZING.  Please take the time to thank Miss Stuwe and the PTO for their efforts sending us on this great experience.  Thank you to all the families who remembered to send their kids in Badger blue, despite the lack of reminders from me the past few days.

R  Special thanks to all the families who remembered me on teacher appreciation week this year.  I enjoyed reading through all the baseball compliments and have most especially enjoyed the gift cards and Doritos to pamper me.  You are very thoughtful.  I’ve enjoyed my time with the kids this year, and it’s nice to know I have your patience and support in dealing with the events of the year.

R  Congratulations to Addison, our third quarter AR top dog! She’ll be crowned later this week.  Addison also earned the honor of conducting the symphony today at our field trip.  J

R  Our class will be in charge of leading morning announcements with Mrs. Thoendel next week.  Please discourage tardies for your child to ensure he/she has the opportunity to participate.

R  The class will select “Book Talk” books on Friday with Mrs. Klaus during library.  These books will be for an interactive book report given in class.  More information will follow next week, including guidelines for visual aids as well as information to practice at home.  Students will be presenting in class April 9, 10, or 11.  The kids will need to keep their book talk books until that time (Mrs. Klaus is aware to recheck books since they will not be able to be turned in next week.)  Please help out by making sure ALL currently checked out books can be returned on Friday so the kids can select their book for the project.  Mrs. Klaus and I will help the kids select books on their reading level to use for the project.  The kids will be taking the books home to create their visual aids and to practice the public speaking portion with you at home.  An example will be given in class, so the kids won’t be able to use the excuse they don’t know what to do. J

R  We will have the opportunity to have an outreach program come in to Pine Creek from the Omaha Children’s Museum.  This is scheduled for April 11.  They will be doing a unit in conjunction with our next Science chapter on the planets and the solar system. 

R  Reminder to mark your calendars for two “no school” days on April 18 and 21. 

R  My HOPE (as in I cannot guarantee this is yet set in stone) is that our books will be back from the publisher for our class to host its publishing party the afternoon of April 24.  I will get you more details to follow when we find out more about the time frame from the publisher, but for right now, pencil April 24 in to your calendars.  It will be the last “parents at school” performance day for you this year with the exclusion of Awards Day and Fun Day, of course. 

R  April 25 we will have our last field trip.  It will be to Lauritzen Gardens in connection with our Earth Day/Arbor Day holidays study.  Permission notices will be sent in a few weeks.  Parents will be allowed to either carpool from the school or meet us at the gardens.  We will be arriving to the gardens around noon to eat lunch there and go on a self-guided tour/scavenger hunt.  Parents who wish to attend will be able to mark so on the permission notices when they are sent, and will be responsible for their own payment into the gardens, which I believe is $7 per adult. 

R  Curricular notifications:

o   There is a Science test tomorrow over Unit 7 (study packs were sent home today.)

o   We’re finishing our unit on Geometry in Math and will be testing on it next week.  Even though there is not an official time requirement for IXL this week, I would highly encourage your students to practice in the geometry sections this week for practice for the test.  Vocabulary such as congruent, translation, rotation, reflection, and symmetry have been difficult.  Students will also need to be able to count and identify faces, verticies, and edges, so practice in all these areas will be of great benefit.

o   In Social Studies we’re still moving through our unit on Government and the process of voting and making laws.

o   In writing we’ll start building paragraphs:  topic sentences, 3-5 solid details, and a conclusion sentence.  For practice at home, have your child take a question you ask (such as “What’s your favorite animal?”) and turn it into a topic sentence that uses the main idea of the question (such as “My favorite animal is a ___ “ or “The ____ is an amazing animal and is my favorite of all the animals.”)  You can also take questions and have the kids practice setting up the paragraph and work with them to add in details that strengthen the content of the paragraph for added emphasis.  It’s a difficult assessment, to be very honest.  This year we’ll try to master getting one paragraph nailed so that next year, the kids will be ready to build into a 5 paragraph report.

o   LA- The study of problem/solution in stories will be big the next few weeks.  We’re still going to be reviewing reference sources and how to locate information (as the past theme test has told me we are in need of more review.) 

Have a great night!  Cheers!