Last Week of April!

We started our last round of "shares" this week. Our class decided that one person will share each day, and that person gets to sit in our fancy chair for the day! We also got new classroom jobs today -- be sure to ask your child which jobs they applied for :) 

Reminders:

• It's a 4 day week this week!

Coming up:

April 27: Math Forward Test

April 28: Math Forward Test

April 30: NO SCHOOL

Curriculum:

Math: We've been working really hard at understanding word problems and writing an equation that matches. When students understand a problem, they are more likely to realize if their answer is unreasonable. For example, if the problem is: There are 50 girls at Y-Care and some boys. There are 110 children at Y-Care. How many boys are there? When we work to understand this problem, we know that there would have to be less than 110 boys, so an answer more than that could not be correct. This is the kind of thinking we hope to see from all of our mathematicians. 

Writing: We're starting a new unit: Fairy Tales! For our first week, students get to choose if they want to adapt Little Red Riding Hood or Three Billy Goats Gruff. Storytelling these stories, and their adaptations, will help your child greatly in their writing.

Reading: We are also starting a new unit in reading as well. This one is all about social issues (we describe this to kids as "people problems") We begin this unit getting our readers to see the life lessons that books teach us -- not just a lesson that the character learns, but something anyone could learn after reading the book. Feel free to ask your child, "What life lesson did you learn from that book?" 

Check out the 4K students storytell Three Billy Goats Gruff to us! 

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Jenny Kocourek

April 19 - 23

We have our first two Forward tests this week Tuesday and Thursday. Hopefully students will be able to get a good night's rest the night before so they're ready to go for the tests!

Reminders:

• If you didn't get a chance to turn in the surprise "Forward" encouragement note to your child, please send it in Monday. Make sure you seal it up so no sneaky eyes get to see! :) 

• If your child would like to practice the Forward tests at home, they can here. They would just click on the Online Tools Training or Item Sampler, Grade 3, ELA or Math. You might talk to your child about what tools (line guide, highlighter, sticky notes, cross out, etc.) they plan to use and which ones were distracting for them.

• We started practicing cursive this week! Ask your child how they like it! 

Coming up:

April 18: Sunday at 12:00 PM Summer School registration begins

April 20: Reading Forward Test

April 22: Reading Forward Test

April 27: Math Forward Test

April 28: Math Forward Test

April 30: NO SCHOOL

Curriculum:

Math: We're on to our FINAL math unit -- wow! This one wraps up the year nicely with Word Problems. Students now need to decide which operation to use (multiplication, division, addition, or subtraction.) Their Unit 7 Test did go home this week; make sure you ask to see it! 

Writing: We have one more week of getting in some grammar concepts. We'll be talking about word parts, nouns, and proper nouns.

Reading: We have our Reading Forward tests this week! We'll also learn some ways to comprehend what's happening or what we're learning when we listen to reading. 

Check out some of the fun from this week!

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Jenny Kocourek

Tis the season of testing! We have a Unit math test this week, but really the testing we have been talking about in class are the Forward tests, which are the state tests. 3rd graders will take the Forward tests in the morning of April 20, 22, and 27. There is really nothing that you need to do at home for this other than making sure your child gets a good restful sleep the night before and have something in their bellies the day of. We will provide snacks for the entire class those days as well (or they can choose to bring their own, as usual.) 

We have been talking about these tests in class to hopefully minimize the worry and stress that can come along with testing for some students. If your child is feeling anxious about them, please let me know so we can work to alleviate some of that. We talk about tests as a way to show off and celebrate all that we have learned and just how much we have grown. 

Reminders:

• Please return the yellow KAT envelope with any donations! 

• 3rd graders will be performing a concert on April 15th @8:00am during the school day. The performance will be virtual (live recording) as well as recorded for future viewing. Students are encouraged to dress up in something nice, avoid jeans and tennis shoes if possible. 

Coming up:

April 12: Pajama Wear

April 13: Purple Wear

April 13: Unit 7 Math Test (Math review due this day)

April 14: Sports Wear

April 15: Hat Day

April 15: Spring Concert -- have your child dress nicely! We can take the hats off for the concert :) 

April 16: KAT (Knowledge-A-Thon) day!

April 16: Rockstar Wear!

April 18: Sunday at 12:00 PM Summer School registration begins

April 20: Reading Forward Test

April 22: Reading Forward Test

April 27: Math Forward Test

Curriculum:

Math: Mathematicians have seemed pretty confident going into this test! The test will be on Tuesday, so the review will also be due then. We'll also spend some time going over the math tools for the Forward test so that they can get familiar with them. 

Writing: This week we will focus on word choice! We'll go over words with multiple meanings (like stable... a horse's stable vs the chair was not stable) and figurative language (similes and metaphors.) 

Reading: Our readers have been doing so well in using all they learned when reading an information text! We'll play a little nonfiction Jeopardy and then give a few more test taking tips! Feel free to share any test taking tips with your child as well (eliminating answers that could not be correct, choosing the best answer, rereading to be sure it's correct, etc.) 

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Jenny Kocourek

April 5-9

Enjoy your long weekend and the beautiful weather! 

Reminders:

• A note will be coming home this week about the spring concert. 3rd graders will be performing a concert on April 15th @8:00am during the school day. The performance will be virtual (live recording) as well as recorded for future viewing. Students are encouraged to dress up in something nice, avoid jeans and tennis shoes if possible. 

Coming up:

April 2: NO SCHOOL

April 5: NO SCHOOL

April 12-16: KAT Dress Up Days to be announced soon :) 

April 15: Spring Concert 

April 16: KAT (Knowledge-A-Thon)

April 18: Sunday at 12:00 PM Summer School registration begins

Curriculum:

Math: We're coming to the end of another unit! So, a math review will be coming home this week. The test will likely be Tuesday, April 13th. If the review is not feeling good for your child, please just have them stop and let me know.

Writing & Reading: We started our "test prep" writing unit. We're working really hard on figuring out what the question is asking us, answering it, and also providing text evidence. You can help your child out about this by talking about their books (What kind of person is the character? What evidence do you have? What page made you think that?) Next we'll be focusing on nonfiction passages and what to do when we're reading information. 

Check out the fun from our Egg Crack Off!

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Jenny Kocourek

Week before "Spring Break!"

Hi Everyone,

It was great to connect during conferences week. If there is anything else that you thought of afterwards that you're wondering, please don't hesitate to email me. 

Reminders:

• I know students were sad they missed out on the 2nd grade concert last year, so Mr. Collins and Ms. Gillis are working on getting a concert together this year! 3rd graders will be performing a concert on April 15th @8:00am during the school day. The performance will be virtual (live recording) as well as recorded for future viewing. Students are encouraged to dress up in something nice, avoid jeans and tennis shoes if possible. 

• Students at NDLC will be participating in an Egg Crack-off!
  Please send a hard-boiled egg in a container to school with your child on Thursday, April 1.  Eggs cannot have paint, crayon, marker, or film on them.
• A bright yellow KAT envelope went home this week.

Coming up:

April 1: Egg Crack-Off - 3rd graders wear BLUE

April 2: NO SCHOOL

April 5: NO SCHOOL

April 12-16: KAT Dress Up Days to be announced soon :) 

April 15: Spring Concert 

April 16: KAT (Knowledge-A-Thon)

April 18: Sunday at 12:00 PM Summer School registration begins

Curriculum:

Math: Our mathematicians have had a blast comparing different units of weight and liquid volume! These are concepts that are so fun for kids to see at home as well (like, searching for the weight on soup labels, cracker boxes, soda cans, etc.). The next part of this unit is all about shapes. We'll start with triangles and angle measurements, and then see if we can come up with our own definitions of shapes (squares, rectangles, parallelograms, etc.) based on examples and non-examples of each.

Writing: We finished our information unit this week! Their final writing "test" will be coming home with a purple sheet stapled to it. On the sheet are some of the teaching points students learned this unit that they should have in their writing for it to be at "third grade" level. Next we're going to have an independent writing project where students get to choose what kind of writing to write -- information, opinion, or narrative! 

Reading:  We've been working on building up our reading stamina and even had a reading MARATHON on Friday to see how long we could read for! You should be seeing a reading log come home each night where students are writing the pages and amount of time they are reading (both at school and home.) 

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Jenny Kocourek

March 22-26

 Hi Everyone,

Conferences are this week! I’m looking forward to connecting with you all about your child.

Reminders:

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• Please fill out this parent/teacher conference survey. if you haven’t yet. 
• If you’re interested in purchasing a book for our class library at the book fair, some popular picks I heard from students were:
• Baby Sitters Little Sister: Karen’s Worst Day
• Press Start
• Dragon Masters: Heat of the Lava Dragon
• Goosebumps
• Any series/book your child would like to see in our class library :)

Coming up:

March 23: Parent Teacher Conferences/Book Fair

March 25: Parent Teacher Conferences/Book Fair

March 26: 11:30 Dismissal

April 2: NO SCHOOL

April 5: NO SCHOOL

April 12-16: KAT Dress Up Days to be announced soon :) 

April 16: KAT (Knowledge-A-Thon) 

Curriculum:

Math: We started talking about customary units of liquid volume (gallon, quart, pint, cup) and will talk more about metric (liters, milliliters) and weight (pound, ounce, gram, kilogram.) It can be fun to help kids see the connections at home:

-How many ounces of water does your bottle hold? How many cups would that be?

-Do you think this bowl will hold 2 pints or 2 quarts? Why?

-How much do you think this bag of chips weighs? Let’s find the weight on the bag!

Writing: We've been able to write our third and final information book with much more independence. Students chose to type them on Google Slides to create their book. We’ll get some feedback from partners and then finish by editing them. 

Reading:  Our researchers loved creating their projects to show off all they learned! The next unit we will begin is Test Prep, where we’ll help kids determine what kind of text they’re reading and provide some test taking tips.  

Our Project Managers in action!

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Jenny Kocourek

Week of March 15-19

Hi Everyone,

The weather has been so beautiful this week! As it's getting closer to spring, you might want to help your child do some "spring cleaning" with their backpack. I'm noticing some of their backpacks hardly fit in their lockers! It would be helpful to remind them of anything that can stay at home, or of anything that has a place at school. 

Reminders:

• Please fill out this parent/teacher conference survey. This just helps me better prepare for our conference and make sure that we go over the things you would like to talk about. 

• Sign up for conferences if you haven’t yet! Let me know if you have any issues accessing the PTC Fast link. 

Coming up:

March 16: Unit 5 Math Test

March 17: Wear Green!

March 23: Parent Teacher Conferences/Book Fair

March 25: Parent Teacher Conferences/Book Fair

March 26: 11:30 Dismissal

April 2: NO SCHOOL

April 5: NO SCHOOL

April 12-16: KAT Dress Up Days to be announced soon :) 

April 16: KAT (Knowledge-A-Thon) 

Curriculum:

Math: We'll take our math test this week! Hopefully your child is feeling confident going into the test. Let me know if there is anything we can do at school to help ease their nerves so they can show off all they know on the test. The next unit is on measurement and polygons.

Writing: Our writers will draft one more book as a club, this time comparing and contrasting their animals. I was so excited to see how many students wanted to bring home their writing for this weekend! Many of them chose to write graphic novels during our free write on Friday; be sure to ask them about it!

Reading:  We have been doing some BIG research work. Our readers have been asking questions, growing theories, and finding evidence for their theories. Next week we’ll wrap up this information unit and celebrate how much they’ve learned.

As always, please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Jenny Kocourek