Week of April 1st

 I hope you all had a lovely spring break! I was so excited to get back to class with my students. We have just a few weeks left before we start ISAT testing and I am so excited about the progress they are making!

ELA:

This week we will be finishing up The One and Only Ivan. We are also working on our opinion writing where students will be discussing how they feel about animals being in zoos or circuses. I enjoy doing this when we read The One and Only Ivan as students really have some amazing thoughts and insights as we read. 

This week we DO have a Morning Warm Up quiz along with our spelling test. We will take our pretest on List Z on Thursday and this is our last list for the year! After that students will be done with spelling tests!

March Reading Calendars were due on Monday, April 1st. Feel free to send me an email letting me know how many minutes your student read if they forgot to turn it in or it was lost. 

Math:

We finished up Topic 12 on Monday and are starting Topic 11 today. This is a pretty short topic that deals with interpreting data on line plots. We will be finishing it up on Thursday. To make sure I at least introduce everything before ISATs, we will be cruising through a few extra lessons for the next couple of weeks. 

Science Fair:

Your student brought home the first step of the Science Fair project yesterday which was coming up with a question that would guide their project. This will be a collaborative project where parts are done both at home and at school. For your student to be successful, they need to make sure that they are following the timeline for the project. This project makes up their whole science grade for this quarter. Yesterday, I sent home a calendar that outlines when each step would be assigned and when each step is due. I included the documents for Step 1 and Step 2 in the email I sent out about this blog post so that you can print anything that goes missing. :)

PFSA Bingo Night:

Our AMAZING PFSA is hosting a Bingo Night on Saturday, April 6th. They use the proceeds from these fun events to sponsor grants for classrooms, like the one they gave us to be able to do Wagons Ho! If you are able, please attend and have some fun while supporting our school!

ISAT Party:

ISATS are coming right up and we will be completing them the last week of April. I talked to my class yesterday about the ISAT party that we will be having after we complete our ISATs. Students can earn an invitation to the party one of two ways. The first way is the score, this means that they meet their goal on the ISAT by scoring a 3 or 4 or by improving one level from the practice ISAT they took in the fall. The second way they can earn an invitation is by working hard from now until ISATs showing that they are trying to do their very best. I offer this second option because I know test anxiety is a real thing and my goal is to take that off the plate for my students. I want them to feel confident in their knowledge and be able to show what they know. :) This party will be a lot of fun! I usually have pizza and root beer floats. If you would like to help out and send in supplies, let me know and I will let you know what we need. :)