Mrs. Watson's Classroom: October 2016

Parent Teacher Conferences

Please look in your child's Friday Folder for your conference time. Please let me know ASAP if the time scheduled doesn't work for you. My goal is to meet with 100% of parents. I am super excited to share the awesome things your children have been doing since the beginning of the year.

Book Orders

Book Orders are due Thursday, November 10th. Please makes checks payable to Scholastic. You are also able to order online. Please check your child's Friday folder for information on this. If you would like a book order to be a gift, please just shoot me an email and we can work on a way to get it to you. I know I do this a lot for my own kiddos.

Puzzles

I have just realized how much our class LOVES puzzles. We were in the library today and there are cool station-like tables set up. One of them was puzzles. The kids couldn't stop. This really made my heart happy, because I also shared their love of puzzles. I am going to bring a few from home for our class to leave out on a table and work on. If you have any old puzzles laying around that you are trying to get rid of (50 pieces or more), please feel free to donate them to our class. They were begging me to buy puzzles.

Reading

This week we have continued reading our read aloud book, Jack's Run. We have really focused on characters. We talked about physical and character traits of characters, how they change and even the difference between main and supporting characters.

Next week we are going to focus on cause and effect. There are lots of examples of this in our read aloud, just right books your child is reading and the book club books we read together.

Writing
Our personal narratives were amazing. Thanks to all those that were able to make it to the breakfast where we shared these. I can't wait to show you the growth they have made since the beginning of the year at parent teacher conferences. We are now working on essays titled, "What American Means to Me." This has been super fun. Students are thinking about why they love America. We have had amazing conversations about education, freedom, veteran's and even what makes our country unique.

Next week we will be talking about a typical five paragraph essay with three main ideas and supporting details. We are hoping these are typed and ready to share at Veteran's Day/Grandparents Day.

Math
Your kiddos rocked their multiplication tests!! EVERY SINGLE kiddo scored an A or a B on the test. I was beyond excited for them! Those should be coming home tonight.

Next week, we are going to be starting multiplication of 2-3 digit numbers by 2 digit numbers. I teach the same lesson to every student, but I meet with every child each day. For those students that do really well on the pretest, I challenge with multi-step problems and larger numbers. For those kiddos that need extra support, we slow down, use manipulative and really try to understand problems. I am trying to teach each child where they are.

Science
Weathering, Erosion and Deposition has been so fun to learn about. Students are continuing to talk about these concepts. Next week we will be reviewing and testing. Be watching for this review to come home Wednesday night.

Important Dates

October 28th- Fall Room Parties at 2:30 (all are welcome!!)
October 31st- NO SCHOOL- teacher work day
November 4th- Lego Movie Night at Beulah (5:30)
November 7th- Parent Teacher Conferences 3:30-7:00
November 8th- NO SCHOOL (election day)
November 10th- Parent Teacher Conferences 3:30-7:00
November 11th- NO SCHOOL (teacher's work day)
November 14th- Veteran's Assembly & Grandparent's Day
November 15th- Picture Retake Day
November 16th- PTA meeting at 6:30
November 23-25th- Thanksgiving Break

Monday, November 14th, we will celebrate Veteran's Day & Grandparent/Special Friend Day at Beulah Ralph! We are super excited about this. Grades 3-5 will have an assembly from 10:00-10:30 and from 10:30-11:00 we will invite grandparents and special friends back to our classroom for an activity.

In preparation for this day, students have started to talk about what America means to them. Monday, we downloaded a new app called Explain Everything. Students took this app and ran with it. They created a presentation about what American means to them. I was so impressed with their problem solving strategies in trying to figure out all this app has to offer.