Thank you so much to everyone for attending
Back to School Night.  We had 20 out of 24 families attend!

I appreciate your work in getting the updated emergency contact information completed, the parent questionnaire, and the stack of permission slips signed.  We are off to a good start.  Entry assessments are taking place this week.  Initial fluencies, a third grade level comprehension test, and addition and subtraction baseline tests will be given.

I sent home your student’s math workbook pages to help with homework this evening.  The concept of rounding is not the easiest to grasp in a single lesson.  Please assist and know that we will continue to practice each day in class.   Homework is very light this week.  Math will be every night.  Tuesday and Wednesday your student will bring home the science or social studies book.  Please fill out the condition paper(blue) and return it to school on Thursday.  Library starts next week and all blue papers must be turned in to check out books. 🙂

PE is every morning except Thursday.  Thank you for sending your child in tennis shoes.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions.

Our testing window is unique 🙂  Our class has been assigned Thursday, April 21st,  and Friday, April 22nd,  morning from 8:15- 10:00 am.   Please be sure your child is well rested and has eaten a healthy breakfast.  We begin with English Language Arts- lots of reading!

We have next week off from testing and then resume the first week of May.   This would be Monday, May 2 through Friday, May 6th .  Our testing window is every morning from 8:15- 10:00.

Students are expected to make up any testing sessions missed.

Remember: Field trip to Effie Yeaw on Friday, April  29th from 8:30- 2:00.  Our chaperones are Mrs. Cuevas, Mr. Price, Mr. Brinkley, Mrs. Huthala, Mrs. Kimball, and Mrs. Bajwa.  

Dear Parents,

I am so excited to tell you about the Apex Fun Run event coming to our school for the next two weeks!  The Apex program teaches leadership and fitness to our students who are raising pledges for the Fun Run next Thursday, March 31^st.

This year’s character theme is Apex Dream Team, where students will join Johnny Dreamer and the Apex team in an exciting journey to learn what it means to become a Dream Team Leader:

• Dive In!
• Resourceful!
• Elevate Others!
• Attitude Check!
• Make A Difference!

Students are raising pledges for the laps they run (between 26 and 36, 36-lap max).  Each lap is 1/16^th of a mile.  For instance, $1 per lap means $30 dollars to our school if the student runs 30 laps.  Our class has a goal of reaching $3 per lap for each student, or $90 simple donations.

Here’s the important part!  The majority of the funds raised this year will go to our school for technology, upgrading our computers, and general fundraising to support Sunrise teachers and students.  However, the school has promised that an additional 10% of whatever we raise in each class goes directly to that teacher to use in his/her own classroom.  My goal is to raise $100/lap, enough money to buy… books for our book baskets.

Please help us reach our goal by talking to family and friends about pledging for your students.  If you need an access code for www.apexfunrun.com, please just reply.  I hope to see you at the Fun Run next week!

Thanks,

Mrs. Jones

Dear  Parents,

Our D track trimester awards are on Friday, Jan. 29th am at 8:40. The class would like to invite you to our California Indians: 300 Years Ago Museum Grand Opening following the assembly.  The museum will be open from  9:15 until 10:00.

Due to the number of parents that will probably be on campus for the awards assembly,  we voted to move the museum to Friday.  (I am trying to keep your trips to school to one this week! )The students have written, many will have published their own informational text on their tribe, and created replicas of shelters, tools, and clothing. The engineering conversations and discoveries were interesting.   We found out that working with natural resources to create a necessary implement is definitely challenging.  We have a new found appreciation for the inventiveness and workmanship of 300 years ago.  Please join us!

Wow,  and another calendar year is soon to be history!

Your student’s Wednesday folder contains the final progress report for this trimester.  Please sign and return this document by Friday.  Grades close for the second trimester on Friday, Jan. 15th, only two weeks after our return.

Our focus shifts to Native Californians with a large research, writing, and artifact project.  The Monday after holidays, information will be sent home.  Students will be encouraged to look information up on the internet, with adult supervision, to then fill in a graphic organizer and write a report.  Most everything will be completed in class.  There will be a few nights of homework related specifically to the project.   Our class will hold a “Morning at the Museum” on Thurs., Jan. 28th from 8:30 until 9:05.  Assembly is at 9:10 that morning.

Please continue to work on multiplication facts.  We have 6 students who can do 80 problems in 3 minutes and are now working on division facts.  Another 10 students are so close to success- they actually request Rocket Math tests 🙂  There are many games on the internet, but old fashion flashcards get results.

Accelerated Reader (AR) is also working well for many of our students.  21 students have reached their goal and are now working on getting 25 points to earn a Spartan tag at the end of the trimester.  One of our students has read over 650,000 words this year!  Awesome!  Word count goes up very slowly when the students read short books simply to take tests.  Many have improved their comprehension scores this way- 20 students are in the A and B range.  Please encourage your student to read a longer chapter book within the ZPD over the holidays.  Perseverance is a skill that takes practice.

The students have planned the snack events for Friday.  So far we have 15 cookies to decorate and 24  cupcakes that are already decorated.  It looks like we need another dozen sugar cookies. Thank you to all the parents who agreed to donate.  The students are in charge of notes and supplies and are excited about working together to see what they can bring in.  🙂 (or what you are willing to donate!)  Thursday they will break into smaller groups and plan  a  10 minute activity to entertain the rest of the class. Event planning is always interesting to experience this time of year.

Enjoy the two week break.  It always seems hectic, but take the time to relish the excitement and innocence of being an eight/ nine year old during this season.

Until next year…

Sincerely,

Dear Parents,

Progress Reports go home on Wednesday.  Please look over your student’s grades and make any notations that you have questions about.  Some of the students are not turning in assignments even after being reminded.  A zero in any subject will bring the overall grade down.

Please review by spot checking your student’s homework.  Many homework sheets are being turned in without parent initials.  Your help in monitoring homework would be appreciated. Many are turning in work that is incomplete, misspelled, or just plain wrong.  It takes your child’s recess to make corrections.  I have taken one assignment each evening away, so this group has less homework than previous years.  Hopefully the quality will improve.

For many years third grade has been the year to memorize multiplication facts.  That has not changed even with the common core math standards.  Students are expected to practice with flashcards, work online with fact games, and simply commit to memory facts through 9 x 9.  We have proven in class that there are at least 8 different strategies to figure out a basic problem; however, efficiency is the key.  Students simply don’t have the time to work out each and every problem using repeated subtraction and picture drawing.   Please help your child reach the goal of memorization of facts before we track off at the end of January.  The goal is 80 multiplication problems in three minutes.  The class has 6 of 24 students who are close to the goal- Way to go!

Thank you for sending in the field trip forms and money.   Lots of parents signed up to chaperone.  This is a simple trip with docents who do an awesome job explaining and describing the Maidu culture. The Spartan of the Week will draw two names before Friday of this week.  I’ll notify the chosen 🙂   Thank you for all the interest.

Second trimester is already two weeks in :).   Please encourage your student to read and complete the library book by next Monday.  Our library day has changed to Mondays this trimester so we still have a weekend to finish a book if need be.  In the Wednesday folder I will be sending home the new point goal for this trimester.  We took AR quizzes prior to tracking off so many students already have earned points for the current trimester.  Keep reading!

Division was started today.  If your student is memorizing multiplication facts, then this chapter will be a breeze.  If he or she is struggling, please let me know.  The old fashion flashcard drills may be needed.  Memorization is strongly encouraged.

Science has taken the form of a STEM activity by the middle of the week.  STEM is Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.  The learning takes place around a request for help in designing and testing a water filtering system.  The “equipment” arrives on Wednesday and initial tests of various filtering materials happens on Wednesday.  Thursday the students work in teams to design a system to clean the “polluted” water.  Then build and  test their system.  The results are presented on Friday to the other groups.  Excitement was running high today .  Please encourage your student to talk about what he/she learned in class today about wetlands and what these environments do for our fresh water supply.

Hopefully, everyone is back in the swing of school by mid- week.  We are working on reviewing classroom procedures/routines and rules.  Side conversations, blurting, and appropriate classroom behaviors were hot topics today.

The students are very excited about sharing their work for the first trimester.  An open house event is our solution.  On Thursday, October 1st,  from  8:45 until 9:05 the students will gladly explain what we have been busy doing.  Our assembly starts promptly at 9:10.  If you have a few moments to spare, please join us in room R4.

I am attaching a flyer that my daughter and her husband are working with to help the fire victims in Lake County.  They are  bass tournament workers and participants.  They feel the need to help immediately.  I did not broach the subject with the class.  If you are interested and can help out with any item(s) on the list, I will collect and then deliver to my daughter on Friday of this week.   Thank you for considering this opportunity.

Jolene Jones       lake county Just click on this and it will connect to the flyer.

In your student’s  Wednesday folder you will find the final progress report for this trimester.  Grades close on September 18th, with report card grades locked in on September 25th.  Our second trimester begins on the 21st of September and goes through the middle of January.  There are many holidays and weeks off during the next  grading period, so it sounds like a long stretch but add in 6 weeks off for October, Thanksgiving week, and two weeks Winter Break and that trimester is all chopped up.

Please encourage your child to continue to put in lots of effort.  The distributive property takes perseverance (chapter 4 in math) and we have scheduled a chapter test in both science and social studies in the next week.  We continue our work with verbs,  punctuating  dialogue, and subject verb agreement within sentences.  We have also begun the task of publishing a single paragraph article on our chrome books.  The students have each set up their own folders, shared them with me, and are awaiting the final edit.  Hopefully we will have this completed this week and begin our rough drafts of the city habitat project. Thank you for your help in getting the notes and observations written down. I look forward to the sharing that will occur in the next few days.

Our track off day is Friday, October 2nd, for those of you counting the days!